Sebi, bourses meet to beef up systems

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has called for a meeting of stock exchanges on Friday to discuss beefing up of systems and process following a three-hour technical glitch at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) earlier this month.

This would be the first meeting of the newly-constituted Sebi panel on cyber security, aimed at safeguarding the capital markets from technical glitches and cyberattacks. The four-member panel, set up in May, is headed by Sebi’s whole-time member Madhabi Puri Buch; Executive Director S V Murali Dhar Rao and experts from the information technology sector are other members.

Sources said exchanges have been asked to give representation on overall risk management and their preparedness to ensure prudent response, corrective measures for any technical glitch or cyber threat. On July 10, the NSE suffered one of its worst-ever technical glitches, forcing the exchange to stop trading for over three hours as stock prices failed to update. 

Sebi and exchanges may discuss new processes to follow in case of a similar event in future. The regulator may also suggest ways to maintain cyber-resilience requirements aligned with global practices and industry standards in accordance with the needs of India’s capital market structure, said a person in the know. Sebi had in July 2015 issued a set of guidelines for exchanges and other market infrastructure institutions to safeguard their systems. 

It had said MIIs need to have a robust cyber-security framework to provide essential facilities and perform systemically critical functions relating to trading, clearing and settlement in the securities market. Despite this, the regulator witnessed issues with the exchange systems. Hence, it wants to ensure proper governance, monitoring and detection, responses and recovery and periodic audit by the exchanges, said the source cited above.