This is a no-no:
The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) said Morgan Stanley had routinely failed to provide e-mails requested by investors with complaints against its retail brokerage unit, falsely claiming they were lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The securities industry's self-regulatory arm said in a disciplinary complaint that Morgan Stanley claimed that millions of e-mails had been lost in the terrorist attacks that destroyed New York's World Trade Center.
Although its Dean Witter unit's main e-mail servers and archives were destroyed in the attacks, Morgan Stanley had most of those e-mails saved on backup tapes or on users' individual computers, the NASD said.
...The NASD said Morgan Stanley's actions meant hundreds of retail investors may have been denied their right to obtain e-mail evidence during arbitration procedures against Dean Witter, the retail brokerage's former name
The stink is serious.
This is complete crap. I'm not as familiar with NASD regs, but I am under various banking and insurance regs, not to mention still doing some Sox compliance. (No longer under Sox, thank God!) The most basic regs require OFF-SITE storage of backups. Assuming Morgan Stanley had a business continuance plan, all this information should have been replicated somewhere else in the country. Expect fines, and nice ones at that.
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