The primary purpose of the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), a rule under the Securities and Exchange Act, is to arm regulators with the data they need to effectively conduct market surveillance and investigations into suspicious trading activities across all national exchanges. The difference between this and current trade reporting regimes is that it covers more than just trade data. It also requires information about the client and how the trades are broken up and allocated to their accounts which will enable regulators to understand the full lifecycle of a trade and with whom it has been transacted. If your organization lacks a comprehensive and current view of all of your data and your internal surveillance processes are fragmented, you run the risk of external parties (the regulators) knowing more about your business than you do.