Spot

Spot — Proactive Compliance & Communications Surveillance

Proactive Compliance
That Gets Ahead of Risk

Spot is built for regulated organisations.

It is a customer-hosted communications surveillance (supervision) platform for FINRA, DORA, FCA and internal policy compliance.

Spot continuously monitors email and collaboration data using policy-driven rules and natural language analysis to detect potential compliance risks early, reduce false positives, and produce defensible audit evidence.

Spot is deployed inside the customer's Azure environment, ensuring data never leaves their control.

The compliance nightmare you know too well

Manual communications supervision is increasingly ineffective in high-volume environments. In regulated firms, inconsistent monitoring and late discovery often turn into avoidable remediation and audit pressure.

3 weeks

Typical quarterly review time

73%

Issues found too late

$2.8M

Illustrative fine magnitude

Figures vary by industry and firm. Use these as directional indicators; sources and benchmarking notes available on request.

Manual Reviews Are Killing You

Analysts spend weeks reviewing thousands of communications manually. By the time violations surface, the damage (and the audit work) is already underway.

Inconsistent Policy Application

Different reviewers apply policies differently. What gets flagged depends on who is reviewing, what they remember, and how exhausted they are.

Reporting Nightmares

Spreadsheet chaos when auditors or regulators ask for evidence. No consistent workflow, no defensible process, no clear audit trail.

"We were spending more time documenting our compliance failures than actually preventing them." — Chief Compliance Officer, Fortune 500 Financial Firm

Set Clear Expectations. Enforce Them Intelligently.

A communications surveillance (supervision) tool monitors regulated communications, applies policies to detect potential misconduct, and produces defensible evidence for audits. With Simply Discover, you can translate rules like FINRA 3110 or FCA SYSC 10A into practical, flexible policy sets that actually work.

How Spot Works

Spot supports both historical and ongoing communications, enabling continuous supervision as well as retrospective review.

  1. Ingest communications from email and collaboration platforms, including Microsoft 365 and archived data.
  2. Apply policy-driven rules combining keywords, exclusions, and natural language analysis.
  3. Surface potential compliance risks with clear evidence and contextual rationale.
  4. Enable reviewers to classify messages as Compliant, Non-Compliant, or Requiring Review.
  5. Track reviewer actions, outcomes, and trends with a full, exportable audit trail.

Regulatory & Policy Coverage

Spot helps you operationalise supervision obligations by turning regulatory expectations into repeatable monitoring and evidence.

  • FINRA supervision (e.g., Rule 3110): continuous review workflows, targeted sampling, reviewer classification, and escalation-ready audit trails.
  • Books & records expectations: retention-aware handling of communications, consistent review outcomes, and exportable evidence packs.
  • DORA-aligned assurance: audit-ready reporting, monitoring outputs, and defensible oversight records that support operational resilience programmes.
  • Internal policy compliance: versionable, layered policies written in plain English and applied consistently across high-volume communications.

Seed Policies with Keywords

Start with keywords and phrases known to indicate risk, then add exclusions to reduce noise and avoid alert fatigue.

Write Rules in Plain English

Create policies naturally with optional violation examples—so teams can align on intent, not just keywords.

Layer Multiple Rules

Model real-world breaches with flexible policy sets—because risk rarely shows up as a single obvious phrase.

Review, Classify, and Act — All in One Place

No more scattered alerts. Spot brings supervision, evidence, and reviewer actions into a single, streamlined view.

Surface Potential Issues

Use natural language analysis to detect contextual, implied, or veiled compliance risks that keyword-only systems commonly miss—complete with explainable evidence for every flag.

Classify Messages Quickly

Classify each message as Compliant, Non-Compliant, or Flagged for Review—creating consistent outcomes and defensible reviewer records.

Speed Up Workflows

Keep reviewers moving with hotkey navigation and efficient screen design—optimised for high-volume supervision teams.

Transparent Evidence

See why something was flagged—clear rationale, supporting context, and evidence surfaced for each result.

Built for These Use Cases — and More

Spot — Proactive Compliance & Communications Surveillance is designed for regulated organisations that need continuous, explainable supervision of employee and client communications, including:

Financial services and broker-dealers

Firms operating under FCA, FINRA, DORA, or similar regulatory regimes

Compliance, surveillance, and supervisory teams managing high-volume email or collaboration data

Organisations that require communications data to remain inside their own Azure tenant (customer-hosted)

Supervise Broker-Dealer Comms

Meet FINRA supervision obligations with targeted, ongoing review of broker-dealer communications. Detect potential violations early and show evidence of active oversight.

Detect Insider Risk & MNPI Exposure

Surface early indicators of insider risk and mishandled material non-public information (MNPI). Go beyond keywords to find veiled intent and subtle signals of risk.

Monitor Financial Promotions

Identify unbalanced risk/reward claims and misleading promotional language before they're published—or spread. Tailor policies to reflect your own standards or FCA expectations.

Reduce False Positives at Scale

Cut through the noise in high-volume environments. Fine-tune exclusions and natural language rules to reduce alert fatigue and focus attention where it matters most.

Stay Audit-Ready Without the Spreadsheets

Supervision needs to be visible, consistent, and explainable—especially when regulators or auditors ask for evidence.

View Compliance Performance

Track supervision outcomes by policy, rule, mailbox, or reviewer—with defensible performance and trend reporting.

Track Over Time

Track message volumes, violation rates, and reviewer actions over time—so supervision is measurable, not anecdotal.

Export Reports in Minutes

Export audit-ready evidence packs in minutes—traceable reviewer actions, clear rationale, and consistent outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Quick answers for compliance, surveillance, and supervisory teams evaluating customer-hosted communications monitoring.

Is Spot a SaaS compliance tool?

No. Spot is deployed inside the customer’s Azure environment so communications data and analysis remain under the customer’s control.

Can Spot run entirely inside our Azure tenant with no data leaving?

Yes. Spot is customer-hosted within your Azure tenant. Data ingestion, policy evaluation, reviewer workflows, and audit exports run within your environment.

What does Spot supervise?

Spot supervises employee and client communications across email and collaboration sources, applying policy-driven rules and natural language analysis to surface potential compliance risks.

How does Spot reduce false positives?

Spot combines keyword seeding, exclusions, and contextual rules so reviewers see fewer noisy alerts and clearer evidence for each flag.

Does Spot support FINRA supervision workflows?

Yes. Spot supports ongoing supervision and retrospective review with reviewer classification, escalation-ready audit trails, and exportable reporting to demonstrate consistent oversight.

Can Spot be used for internal policy compliance?

Yes. Spot policies can be authored in plain English, layered, versioned, and applied consistently to enforce internal communication policies at scale.

Why choose Simply Discover?

Built for regulated industries and complex environments, Spot helps compliance, surveillance, and supervisory teams uncover potential breaches in real time—even when language is subtle, implied, or off-script.

Detect what others miss

Understand what is meant, not just what is said—so risk does not hide behind polite language.

Maintain control

Host everything within your Azure tenant. Data does not leave your domain—no vendor cloud processing required.

Built for efficiency & accuracy

Optimised UI with hotkey navigation keeps reviewers moving—backed by clearly marked evidence and rationale.

Works alongside eDiscovery

Combine reactive investigations and proactive supervision in one place—so escalations become cases with context.

"It's built for teams who need to move fast without cutting corners." — Simply Discover

Who Spot Is Best Suited For

Spot is best suited to regulated organisations that need continuous, defensible supervision of communications, where context, auditability, and data residency are critical.

Organisations looking for simple, SaaS-based keyword scanning without supervisory workflows, evidence packs, or audit obligations may find lighter tools sufficient.

Don't Wait for a Violation to Unfold

Spot helps you move from reactive to ready—detecting and managing communication risk as it happens, not weeks later. Use it alongside Simply Discover's eDiscovery engine to bring investigation, supervision, and governance under one roof.

30-day pilot program available. If you don't see dramatic improvement in your compliance workflow, we'll part as friends.
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