Arctera Product Exec on AI Across Data, Surveillance & More

As regulated industries cautiously expand their use of AI, data compliance vendors are increasingly positioned at the center of that transition. 

In a conversation with Channel Insider, Arctera Senior Director of Product Management Dave Scott outlines how the company is applying AI across surveillance, discovery, and compliance workflows—and why its recent structural changes and product investments are designed to help risk-averse organizations unlock value from data without compromising regulatory trust.

How Arctera’s product strategy evolved from data archiving to AI-driven surveillance

Scott has worked on Arctera’s products for nearly 30 years. Over that period, he has seen not just the company change, but also the entire market for file storage and security evolve.

“In the early days, we talked a lot about archiving, and we’ve certainly evolved since then,” said Scott. “What has happened in the last decade is just an explosion of content sources businesses now access and work with.”

“The job isn’t storage anymore, it’s now e-discovery and surveillance,” Scott continued. “The job has become to take in communications from a number of different sources and sort through all of the noise to identify the actual signals you need to address.”

Arctera’s platform offers compliance-focused surveillance capabilities for organizations that need to, for example, ensure all communications occur in appropriate channels. 

A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announcement in January 2025 shows 12 financial firms agreed to pay more than $63 million for failing to retain required business communications sent through unofficial channels.

To Scott and Arctera, providing a technical solution to the problems posed by the widening of communications is paramount to keeping customers in business.

“The surveillance work is where we sort of play Big Brother,” Scott said. “Right now, it feels sort of like Whack-A-Mole. Every time you address something, or find something that is an issue, something else pops back up.”

What CSG’s acquisition means for Arctera’s data compliance business

While Arctera has existed in one form or another for decades, the company has undergone several significant structural changes over the last few years.

The company spun off from its former partner, Veritas, late in 2024 to focus almost exclusively on the SMB market and support three formerly Veritas-established products: Data Compliance. InfoScale, and Backup Exec.

InfoScale and Backup Exec have now become standalone business units within CSG. Arctera is now a standalone data compliance business unit. Scott says the changes are exciting because he now feels the company has a solid foundation on which to move forward.

“It feels like we finally found a home that will be more permanent for us,” said Scott.

How regulated industries are adopting AI for compliance, discovery, and surveillance

In July, Arctera rolled out AI-focused product updates, including:

• Capture: Arctera Insight will now be able to capture data from LLMs like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, enabling teams to access data that had previously been a risky compliance blind spot. The update further captures over 120 sources, including native capture of modern messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Google Messages, and Microsoft Teams.
• Chronicle: Arctera Insight is introducing InsightBooks, an AI-powered capability that intelligently summarizes information spread across various communication channels, including messages, chats, meeting transcripts, and AI prompts submitted to LLMs. This tool provides context and surface patterns that can be buried in communication sprawl, while assisting in developing weekly summaries, status reports, and action-item task lists in response to standard or user-submitted prompts.
• Contain: The tool enables organizations to lift the blanket prohibition of public LLM use and access more AI benefits. Through a free browser plug-in, the tool allows masking any sensitive information that team members may accidentally include in a prompt for an LLM, enabling the use of LLMs while protecting sensitive data and ensuring compliance.

To Scott, there is a wealth of corporate knowledge available in the varied files within an organization. He, like others, sees AI as the way to finally unlock the value of that data to drive business decisions and outcomes.

However, AI adoption in regulated industries has, on average, been much slower than in other market segments. According to McKinsey, industries with heavy regulatory requirements consistently report lower AI adoption rates, with governance and compliance cited as leading barriers to deployment.

As Scott highlights, while individual employees might want to leverage AI in their discovery and security workflows, executive leadership often remains wary of AI, and approval processes often stagnate potential innovation.

Slowly, that mindset is shifting, Scott says.

“Our approach honestly has always been that you cannot do this work without some type of enrichment to the process,” said Scott. 

Why compliance-first AI development is central to Arctera’s product roadmap

Because of its focus on regulated industries, Scott says Arctera has always committed to publicly showing compliance and regulatory awareness as it brings solutions to market.

“We’ve always been very upfront in showing our work,” Scott said, noting that Arctera embraced AI within the products in a gradual process that first focused on machine learning and analytics before adding generative AI about a year and a half ago.

Scott highlights regulatory standards across the EU and the US as examples of how varied expectations can be for certain businesses. As European laws on voice-based communication emerge and regulations around everything from data classification to privacy continue to expand, Scott says Arctera is focused on bringing its users the automated workflows they need to keep up.

Why on-premises support and integration partnerships remain critical in 2026

Like everyone in December, Scott has his mind on the upcoming calendar year. To him, growing in 2026 will mean applying lessons learned this year to the complex realities its partners and customers face.

One area he expects to see growth in is Arctera’s ability to support a variety of infrastructure options for its customers. The company still serves on-premises and hybrid deployments, in addition to SaaS and cloud-based solutions, which he considers a differentiator in the market.

“We’re kind of the only game in town now, and I want to make sure we tell our on-premises and hybrid story well in 2026,” Scott said. 

Scott also emphasizes that CSG’s acquisition and the subsequent rebuilding of the business units will unlock internal resources and support for Arctera that it did not previously have, in everything from legal to operations.

That renewed energy will also extend to partnerships. Scott says he wants to see Arctera pursue strategic integration partnerships with companies that provide complementary solutions to Arctera’s customer base. 

“Cross-pollinating install bases is absolutely a priority next year. Technical integration partners are ideal for us as we go to market,” Scott said.