The Investment Center has implemented SunGard’s Protegent Social Media Surveillance tools, designed to help monitor and enforce social media policy and regulatory requirements.

The program helps companies to monitor and archive their employees’ social media content, including on websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

“The growth in usage of social networking websites by securities firms and their advisors combined with evolving regulatory and firm-specific supervisory requirements have resulted in a need for more sophisticated surveillance systems,” SunGard said in a statement.

The firm says its Protegent system aids adherence to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) supervisory requirements, by using automated tools for moderation and pre-approval of content that may be considered as an advertisement. The system includes a pre-approval content library, lexicon detection and email notifications.

Compliance issues are considered a barrier to the use of social media for finance and investment professionals, due to the monitoring and archiving requirements; however, it is also argued that having no policy in place carries dangers, inasmuch as employees may use social media without being monitored.

Early this month it emerged Morgan Stanley Smith Barney had jumped into the social networking space by allowing its brokers to communicate information via Twitter. Starting this month, a test group of 600 MSSB advisors were given the opportunity to make full use of both Twitter and LinkedIn to disseminate information and build client networks.