A Guide To Website Archiving 2023
Companies in all industries are publishing more and more content online.
This has become even more relevant since the pandemic, as the global community has stepped in to overcome the physical limitations imposed by the lockdown.
Websites are used to sell products and services to customers, publish and distribute sales and marketing materials, and serve as a primary means of communication with the general public, from small businesses to state governments.
The proliferation of digital content presents a number of new challenges, such as financial institutions having to meet multiple compliance obligations to use digital channels (including websites) to advertise to customers. In other places, companies may need to keep records of their website content for dispute resolution purposes, while others may simply want to keep the websites for cultural or historical significance, public records, or as a reference for future marketing campaigns. . .
Website logging is the only way to store website content so you can see what it was at a certain point in time. It's the only way to create and maintain stable, time-stamped, proven-accurate and free web content. As the archives are self-contained, they are completely separate from the original site architecture and contain only the elements that existed at the time of the archive, creating a replication as close as possible to its original form.
There are many reasons for an organization to archive its website, but in all cases you must ensure that your archives are complete, secure and legal.
In this guide, we'll look at some of the unique challenges associated with web registration in three different industries: financial services, the public sector, and brands.
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Introduction to website files
Website Archive enables companies in the financial, public and retail sectors to maintain an unaltered record of their websites. It helps to ensure:
1. Agreement
Internationally regulated companies and organizations are required to record and maintain all electronic communications in accordance with MiFID II (EU), FCA (UK), SEC (US), ASIC (AU) and FINRA (US) regulations. For example, MiFID II established that registered electronic communication:
• Comprehensive - Organizations must understand all types of electronic communications and who is using them. They must also have systems and processes in place to document and maintain records of those communications.
• Accuracy - An organization must have complete confidence in the content and metadata of recorded electronic communications that can indicate the exact date and time of the event.
• High quality - an organization must be able to reproduce electronic communication records as faithfully as possible in their 'original' form.
The folder is expanded globally. Beginning in November 2022, the SEC's trading rules expanded the definition of "advertisement" to include web content, which must now be fully captured and archived. Meanwhile, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has begun requiring insurers to provide records of historical website pricing terms and imposing fines on those who fail to provide them.
2. Legal acceptance
Businesses may be required to provide proof of electronic data forensics. Records must show that the data was saved in an unaltered format and when archived. These requirements are covered by the following rules and regulations.
• Federal Rules of Evidence (Rule 901) - Requirements for identification or identification of evidence.
• Code of Conduct for Material Weight and Legal Acceptance of Electronic Data (BS 10008:2014) - Guarantee the accuracy and integrity of electronic data.
• SEC Rule 17a-4: Require companies to store electronic business communications in a non-destructive, non-recoverable (WORM) format.
• eDiscovery Requests - Storing location information for eDiscovery and dispute resolution purposes helps ensure records are undisputed and an accurate representation of the content.
3. Protection of intellectual property and brand assets
There is a clear incentive for brands to keep long-term records of their activity to inform future campaigns. However, as more businesses are conducted online, they continue to create and publish large amounts of digital content at a pace that is difficult to keep up with. Website archiving can be done on a regular basis, and the unlimited cloud storage and the ability to store large data sets, prove that it is priceless.
4. Protecting records of cultural and historical importance
Public sector organizations and archives can request the preservation of culturally significant content on the web for quick access to historical public records information. A web archiver is a good solution for storing this large amount of data and storing it in an unmodified WORM file format.
Who uses web archiving?
Economic services
The financial services industry is under constant pressure to open up new online channels. But the use of these channels must be balanced with strict compliance regulations from the SEC, ASIC, FINRA and others.
Any solution must be able to demonstrate compliance with such regulations as well as data sovereignty and GDPR requirements.
Government sector
Many national archives, libraries, governments, and universities store geographic data to preserve records of any cultural or historical significance. This is largely due to legislation such as the UK Public Records Act of 1958 and more recently the Freedom of Information Act of 2000.
As the public sector moves more and more operations online, organizations are looking for ways to improve their website archiving policies to take advantage of new technologies such as:
Cloud - The ability to store large amounts of data efficiently and flexibly.
Indexing and retrieval - the information can be used by researchers, authorities, students and members of the public (including public portals such as the UK's National Archives).
An upgrade from the traditional ARC file format to the ISO standard WARC file format, which helps store digital or digital content.
Brand Name:
FMCG brands are creating online content alongside traditional brand assets. This content is subject to change, corruption or loss without planning or consideration.
Online brand activity logs and customer communications can help...
Inform the brand's future direction (by tracking performance)
Inspire future campaigns
In the event of disputes, please provide legally authorized records of all communications.
How is a website maintained?
When it comes to archiving your website content, there are many ways to do so. Free online tools like Wayback Machine are options, but they require users to save each page individually. Given the frequency with which purchases must be made to satisfy regulators, this is impossible for most companies; That is, every time there is a change.
Although some companies rely on CMS (Content Management System) backups for accounting purposes, there are some key differences between backups and archives.
Digital signatures and metadata. More importantly, the data recovered from a CMS backup is not digitally signed and therefore not valid or admissible in a court of law. Additionally, CMS backups prevent legal teams from easily exporting a dataset with all the necessary metadata.
Full text search. CMS Backup does not provide full text search functionality. Auditors may request information urgently and immediately; The information collected when you visit your site manually makes it difficult to quickly identify certain data.
Capture relevant information. Certain accounting rules for regulated industries (such as the public sector and financial services) do not meet CMS support requirements.
Alternatively, an automated website registry service allows businesses to fully document their website content, reducing manual effort and ensuring legal compliance.
Drag your options
As the digital landscape expands, so does the level of control. Organizations such as the SEC and ASIC have made significant changes to reflect our reliance on online platforms and the fact that important information can easily be lost in all the things we deal with every day.
Web archives serve many functions for many different types of organizations and have increasingly become an integral part of modern business. Whether it's to satisfy regulators, protect your brand's digital portfolio, or preserve culturally and historically significant data, it applies to everything from the public sector to financial services, retail brands and more.
As archiving requirements increase, some capabilities provided by third-party compliance providers will almost always be necessary. Automatic website collection allows businesses to visit their entire website at regular intervals and collect the most current version of the website at each time. A full-text search further reduces the size of the task to a manageable level when a separate page is required for the subject. However, if this information is not stored in a legally acceptable format, the whole process is worthless, at least in terms of compliance.
Before starting the archiving process, it's important to understand its purpose and whether your team has the tools to handle it. Only then will you begin to know the right focus of resources and who can help you achieve those goals. And if your goals are legal obligations, you have to be careful in an increasingly strict regulatory environment.
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