Mobile technology is currently a hot topic for the financial services industry. Many industry publications, including our own FTF News, have written special reports (I will link Eugene’s article here) exploring the growing mobile technology space and the new prospects it has created. Companies have been using this new resource to open up the communication between their middle and back-offices and to streamline many decision making processes as well. However, with the good comes the bad. Mobile technology may also be creating a window of opportunity for market abuse and cyber crime.
B.I.S.S. Research recently published a research paper regarding the need for all UK related financial services firms to create secure mobile strategies and to find 
ways to deter the many possibilities of criminal activity. Technology in any capacity creates opportunities both helpful and hurtful; mobile technology in particular produces many loop holes that can be used to abuse and trade market information illegally. The report points out that many financial firms exclude mobile phones in call recording requirements, meaning anyone who does not want a conversation recorded simply needs to pick up their mobile device.
This fact leaves financial firms very vulnerable to the possibility that an employee may be taking company information into their own hands. Whenever new technology is created, mobile or otherwise, compliance departments need to look at all the possible outcomes that can be generated from it both good and bad. Personally, until the B.I.S.S. report I had not heard, or thought, that mobile technology could lead to a new surge in financial crime. Publications and researchers alike were only looking at the new possibilities that mobile technology could create. It is refreshing to read something that makes you think about the other side of the coin. What do you think? Is the large influx of mobile technology a good thing, or are we simply creating more threats to financial firms?
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