A four-letter word was uttered early and often at a recent conference that brought together top officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission: Data.
In recent years, the SEC has made no secret of its desire to deploy sophisticated new technology capable of parsing the petabytes of data it collects to identify financial reporting red flags worthy of investigation. Yet, at the SEC Speaks confab in Washington D.C., held by the Practising Law Institute last month, SEC leadership and staffers indicated that this year the SEC will work to connect the dots of these data-based initiatives and better integrate them into examinations, investigations, and prosecutions.
