Although regulatory authorities are cracking down on insider trading, an increasing number of traders looking for easy money continue to resort to illicit transactions.
The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is fighting back. It introduced a new online information-gathering system in late January named Compliance WAN (wide-area network), which gives regulators direct access to the history of customer transactions at brokerages.
Previously, the SESC had employees of securities houses personally deliver data stored on floppy disks whenever the watchdog organization suspected something fishy was going on in stock market and needed evidence.