Start ops from disaster recovery site within 45 minutes of tech glitch: Sebi tells MIIs

New Delhi: Coming out with fresh guidelines, Sebi on Monday asked market infrastructure institutions to begin operations from disaster recovery sites within 45 minutes of a disruption to critical systems, including trading.

The directive comes against the backdrop of a technical glitch at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on February 24 that halted trading for nearly four hours.

In a statement, Sebi asked the governing board of NSE to determine why the bourse's management failed to shift its operations from primary site to Disaster Recovery (DR) site within the time frame specified by the regulator and also fix individual responsibilities for the same. This should be completed within 21 days, Sebi said.

On February 24, trading activity was halted at 11.40 am on the NSE and the exchange made an announcement with respect to re-opening of the markets to its members at 3.17 pm.

In addition, NSE or NSE Clearing Ltd (NCL) have been advised to implement within 90 days functionality of updation of collaterals at the slave system of NCL placed at data center of BSE/MSEI and connect trading system at primary site of NSE to the slave system of NCL placed at data center of BSE/MSEI.

Separately, the exchange attributed the trading disruption to telecom links as well as SAN (Storage Area Network) system failure. The National Stock Exchange (NSE) presented its detailed root cause analysis with regard to the trading halt before Sebi's Technical Advisory Committee on Monday.

The committee, after due deliberations, has come out with the new framework for all Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs) -- stock exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories.

Under the framework, unannounced live trading session need to be conducted from DR site of the MIIs with a notice of four hours from Sebi before the start of the trading session, starting from April 2021, Sebi said. It, further, said unannounced live trading session would be conducted from DR site of the MIIs with a short notice of 45 minutes from the regulator before the start of the trading session, starting from July 2021.

"In the event of disruption in the 'critical systems' of the MII, the MII shall declare that incident as 'Disaster' within 30 minutes of incident (earlier 2 hours) and take measures to restore operations including from DRS within 45 minutes (earlier 2 hours) from the declaration of 'disaster'," Sebi said.

Further, MIIs need to study the feasibility of intra-day shifting from primary Site to DR site with a notice of 45 minutes

from Sebi.