News agency Reuters is making new security and compliance technologies available to financial services customers using its instant messaging (IM) service.

More than 60,000 finance industry employees, who use the service to communicate in real time across trading floors, will be able to tighten security when the firm incorporates messaging specialist FaceTime's TrueCompliance product into the Compliance Manager function of Reuters Messaging later this year.

David Gurle, global head of collaboration services at Reuters, told Computing that the new technology will help customers meet compliance regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II.

'Firms want active compliance tools where they can be proactive rather than reactive,' said Gurle.

'Previously it would be hard to put disclaimers into the text or change requirements depending on which IM group was communicating.'

City companies will also be able to apply a strict 'Chinese Walls' approach to IM communication and use the technology to reduce the spread of viruses, says Gurle.

Last month the company was forced to take Reuters Messaging offline for nearly a day when version 3.1 was breached by the Kelvir worm (Computing, 21 April).