More Stories

Informist, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026

--SEBI floats consultation paper to reduce mock disaster recovery drill time

--SEBI floats consultation paper to review disaster recovery framework

MUMBAI – The Securities and Exchange Board of India Tuesday proposed relaxations for stock exchanges, clearing corporations, and depositories in conduct of mock disaster recovery drills and data recovery protocols in case of actual systems disruption. It has, however, proposed extensive strengthening of the stress testing at the primary data centre of these market infrastructure institutions.

SEBI said in a consultation paper that it received representations from commodity derivatives exchanges to reduce the time for conducting mock disaster recovery drills. Currently, all stock exchanges, which include the ones trading only commodity derivatives, have to conduct disaster recovery drills for one full trading day, and intraday shifting to disaster recovery site to primary data centre during mock trading sessions. This was required to see a stock exchange's preparedness to meet stipulated recovery time and recovery point objectives, according to SEBI.

But certain commodity derivatives exchanges complained to SEBI that they were finding it cumbersome to conduct the drills for the whole of market hours since the trading day in some commodity contracts went on till 2355 IST. So, SEBI has proposed relaxations on this front not only for stock exchange but for clearing corporations and depositories as well. SEBI has proposed that the disaster recovery drill involve initiating operations at primary data centre and switching over operations to disaster recovery site during non-working days, with the overall session time being a minimum of only four hours.

Through a circular in March 2022, SEBI had directed the market infrastructure institutions to be swifter in their actions in the event of any disruption to their critical systems. The shifting of live operations to the disaster recovery site must take place faster, it had said. Among the several measures mandated in March 2022, SEBI had directed the institutions to conduct unannounced live trading from the disaster recovery site once in six months.

In Tuesday's consultation paper, SEBI proposed measures to strengthen operational resilience at the primary data centres of market infrastructure institutions. Under the proposals, these institutions will conduct stress or mock testing not only on transaction volumes and orders per second but also on various masters, table sizes, and other non-transactional components. This will help them assess system performance for scaled up activity level, load, and database record.

Further, SEBI has proposed identical configuration or settings between primary data centres and disaster recovery sites of market infrastructure entities. This, according to SEBI, will ensure there is no drift in the configuration or settings at individual component level.

Under another proposal, specific to stock exchanges, if an exchange witnessed disruptions in operations, it can recover lost data from the clearing corporation. SEBI said the connectivity arrangement between a stock exchange and a clearing corporation was different from the link connectivity of a stock exchange's primary data centre to its disaster recovery site. It said the flexibility is warranted since a disruption scenario could impact replication at the disaster recovery site of the stock exchange. SEBI has invited public feedback on this consultation paper by Oct. 5.  End

Reported by Rajesh Gajra

Edited by Avishek Dutta

For users of real-time market data terminals, Informist news is available exclusively on the NSE Cogencis WorkStation.

Cogencis news is now Informist news. This follows the acquisition of Cogencis Information Services Ltd. by NSE Data & Analytics Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. As a part of the transaction, the news department of Cogencis has been sold to Informist Media Pvt. Ltd.

Informist Media Tel +91 (22) 6985-4000

Send comments to feedback@informistmedia.com

© Informist Media Pvt. Ltd. 2026. All rights reserved.