Telecom service, hardware failure led to outage: NSE

MUMBAI: A combination of completely unexpected events led to the four-hour traded halt on the NSE on February 24, according to a root cause analysis by system experts at the country’s largest exchange. One of the critical failures was by a vendor that had a proprietary system embedded into its hardware but was not disclosed to the exchange.
This in turn led to stoppage of several of NSE’s trading-related systems including risk management, clearing & settlement, index and surveillance systems. As a result, NSE was forced to halt trading and bring the system back before restarting regular trading.
NSE also said that it did not shift to the disaster recovery (DR) site because, while Sebi had allowed a four-hour trading halt before shifting to the DR site, the exchange was sure to start trading on its primary site in less than the four-hour passage it had in such situations.
NSE’s report noted that on February 24, digging and construction activities disrupted both its telecom links between its primary site at BKC in central Mumbai and near disaster recovery (NDR) site at Kurla. The distance between the two locations is about 5km. Its DR site is located in Chennai.