For Compliance Administrators and IT Administrators. Communications mapping is the foundation on which surveillance coverage, retention configuration, and regulatory attestation are built.
Overview
Regulators including the SEC and CFTC require firms to capture and retain employee electronic communications across all channels used for business purposes — not only firm-provisioned email. A firm cannot monitor or archive what it has not first identified. Communications mapping is the structured practice of closing that gap.
A communications map documents which channels exist in the environment, who uses them, whether their use is sanctioned by firm policy, and whether they are connected to archiving and surveillance workflows. It is maintained as a living record, updated when new channels are adopted or when employee assignments change.
Communications mapping applies to all firms subject to recordkeeping obligations under SEC Rule 17a-4, FINRA Rule 4511, CFTC Regulation 1.31, MiFID II, FCA SYSC 10A, or equivalent jurisdictional frameworks that require firms to capture, retain, and produce employee communications on request.
Key terms
Approved channel — a communications channel the firm has explicitly sanctioned for business use and connected to archiving and surveillance workflows.
Unapproved channel — a channel in use at the firm that has not been sanctioned, or whose use has been sanctioned but which is not yet connected to monitoring and retention systems.
Participant — an individual user account or identity on a given channel, typically associated with a specific employee record.
Unmapped Participant — a participant identified in archived or captured communications who has not been linked to an employee record in the system.
Retention period — the minimum length of time communications on a given channel must be retained to satisfy firm policy or regulatory requirements.
How it works
MCO eComms Keep ingests communications from connected channels and stores them in a centralized archive. For surveillance and reporting to function correctly, each inbound communication must be attributable to a known employee. Communications mapping is the configuration layer that makes that attribution possible.
The mapping process covers three areas:
Area | What it involves | Why it matters |
Channel inventory | Identifying all channels in use, both approved and unapproved | Establishes the scope of coverage; unidentified channels create recordkeeping gaps |
Participant mapping | Linking channel-specific user accounts (participants) to employee records | Enables per-employee reporting and surfaces unrecognized accounts |
Policy alignment | Confirming each channel's status — approved, restricted, or prohibited — and whether it feeds surveillance and archiving | Drives policy enforcement and supports regulatory attestation |
INFO: The Analytics > Reports area in MCO eComms Keep includes an Unmapped Participants report, which surfaces participants appearing in archived communications who have not yet been linked to an employee record. Resolving Unmapped Participants is a routine maintenance task for Compliance Administrators.
Common use cases
Initial platform onboarding — before surveillance and archiving can go live, a firm maps all active channels and associates employee identities with their accounts on each channel.
Regulatory examination response — when a regulator requests evidence of surveillance coverage, the communications map serves as the documentary record of which channels were monitored, by whom, and for what period.
New channel adoption — when a firm adds a new communications tool, communications mapping determines whether it can be connected to archiving and surveillance workflows before use is permitted.
Employee onboarding and offboarding — when employees join or leave the firm, their participant accounts across all channels must be linked or deactivated in the system to maintain accurate attribution.