Smarsh, a leading managed service provider of innovative, secure and reliable email archiving and compliance solutions, today announced that it has extended its electronic communication archiving services to include messages posted with the popular social media application Twitter.

“This innovation is a logical extension for Smarsh, which has built its business by providing email archiving and compliance solutions for clients in the highly-regulated financial services industry,” said Smarsh founder and CEO Stephen Marsh at 140, a Twitter conference in Mountain View, Calif. that is sponsored in part by Smarsh. “Much like we did by answering a similar demand for instant message archiving solutions, our Twitter archiving service has been developed with the robust compliance review functionality that we are known for.”

Smarsh’s Twitter archiving service enables organizations to capture, preserve, index, search, and produce Twitter messages (“tweets”) from their specified accounts. Tweets are indexed and searchable via post criteria, including date and content keywords, within the secure, Web-based Smarsh Management Console. Messages can then be produced on-demand.

An audit trail captures data on every visual inspection performed by system administrators. The Management Console Reporting Center allows administrators to quantify inspection data with comprehensive reporting functionality. Customizable organizational usage reports and evidence of supervision/policy enforcement can be created in seconds.

Organizations in every industry are using Twitter for immediate communication with clients and prospects, and recognizing the dynamic and viral marketing potential that this platform can deliver. At the same time, public electronic communication presents regulatory, legal and governance challenges that the Smarsh archiving solution can help businesses meet.

Organizations in highly-regulated industries, such as government or financial services, are obligated to preserve client communications and to produce these messages when necessary. FINRA-registered organizations have to regularly review their representatives’ electronic messages, document these visual inspections and note any actions that result.

Tweet content can present a minefield of legal hazards surrounding intellectual property, privacy, defamation, etc., as well as challenges for the human resources department. Twitter messages are subject to a wide range of potential liability, and the legal rules of electronic discovery are applicable. According to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), organizations must manage their electronically stored information (ESI) so that it can be produced in a timely and complete manner when necessary, such as during legal proceedings. No different than a letter, email or memo, tweets could be subpoenaed in a lawsuit.

Tweets are centrally stored in Smarsh’s data centers and securely accessible for review in accordance with organizational retention policy. This enables archiving clients to monitor organizational usage, enforce and evaluate social media usage policies and manage their brand.

Earlier this month, Smarsh launched smarshEncrypt, its end-to-end secure messaging solution. Users can securely transmit electronic messages and files and establish automated, policy-based, organizational encryption controls. The email encryption service was designed to integrate seamlessly with email compliance tools.

“Our clients have peace of mind in knowing that we are innovating solutions that strengthen their compliance efforts while making their review processes more efficient,” said Marsh. “The recent additions to our suite of archiving and compliance solutions are reflective of this commitment.”

About Smarsh Inc. (www.smarsh.com)

Smarsh® is a leading managed service provider of innovative, secure, and reliable email-archiving solutions for message compliance and records retention, proactive litigation readiness and mail server data management. Founded in 2001, the company has built its trusted reputation by handling the sophisticated archiving needs of the financial services industry, and has produced a flawless regulatory audit track record to show for it. Customizable solutions fit the needs, budgets and technological infrastructure of any organization – big or small – and are matched with unrivaled customer support and service.

Smarsh’s growth has been recognized at both the local and national level. In 2008, the company was named to the “Inc. 500”, Inc. magazine’s annual analysis of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, while The Portland Business Journal ranked Smarsh second overall in its growth rankings for the state of Oregon.