What Concerns Do Mobile Devices Present for Hedge Fund Managers, and How Should Those Concerns Be Addressed? (Part Three of Three)

For hedge fund managers, mobile devices are pervasive, unavoidable, valuable and dangerous.  Substantially everyone that works at a hedge fund management company has some sort of mobile device – personal or company-issued or both – and those devices are becoming more sophisticated every day.  On the positive side, mobile devices can raze the obstacles created by time and place; they enable employees to be productive on the go or at off hours.  But on the negative side, mobile devices introduce a number of competitive and regulatory challenges for hedge fund managers: they increase the odds that confidential data will leak; they facilitate the knowing or negligent misuse of material nonpublic information; they raise questions with regard to recordkeeping obligations; and so on.  This article is the last in a three-part series intended to help hedge fund managers identify and address – via policies, procedures and technology – the thorniest business and legal questions raised by mobile devices.  The first article in this series highlighted the risks to hedge fund managers posed by mobile devices, including susceptibility of critical information to leakage or theft, unauthorized trading, penetration of systems by malware and viruses and other potential harms.  See “What Concerns Do Mobile Devices Present for Hedge Fund Managers, and How Should Those Concerns Be Addressed? (Part One of Three),” Hedge Fund Law Report, Vol. 5, No. 15 (Apr. 12, 2012).  The second article offered concrete suggestions on how hedge fund managers can anticipate and address those risks using policies, procedures and technology solutions.  Specifically, that second article identified three suggested steps that managers should take before crafting their mobile device policies and procedures, and made specific recommendations regarding the content of such policies and procedures.  See “What Concerns Do Mobile Devices Present for Hedge Fund Managers, and How Should Those Concerns Be Addressed? (Part Two of Three),” Hedge Fund Law Report. Vol. 5, No. 16 (Apr. 19, 2012).  This article discusses additional specific suggestions on crafting policies and procedures and deploying technology to address the risks posed by mobile devices.  In particular, this article details: how hedge fund managers can prevent access to data on mobile devices by unauthorized persons; how managers may prevent firm personnel from exceeding authorized levels of data access; technology solutions for monitoring mobile devices; archiving data on mobile devices to comply with books and records policies and laws; and policies governing social media access via mobile devices.  See “SEC Risk Alert Discusses When Social Media Interactions May Constitute Prohibited Hedge Fund Client Testimonials,” Hedge Fund Law Report, Vol. 5, No. 14 (Apr. 5, 2012).

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