Each year SIFMA, the US Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, coordinates an industry-wide business continuity test. This year’s took place on October 5th.
The objective of the 2024 test was for participating entities to conduct a functional and performance test of business continuity and disaster recovery plans to exercise and verify the ability to operate through a business continuity and/or disaster recovery event using backup
sites, recovery facilities, and backup communication capabilities.
Speaking after the test Charles DeSimone, SIFMA managing director and deputy head of technology, operations, and BCP commented:
“SIFMA and its members make operational resilience a priority in order to protect clients, data, networks and operations from diverse cyber threats including theft, disruption and destruction. Last weekend we conducted our 2024 SIFMA industry test, which is designed to assess the ability of securities market participants to operate through a significant emergency from their primary or backup data centers and work area recovery sites and to examine the level of resiliency of the markets and the industry overall, and to provide firms and exchanges with an opportunity to test and evaluate their backup sites and backup communications with the markets on a single day.
“The test is supported by all major exchanges, markets and industry utilities, and involves test transactions for commercial paper, equities, options, fixed income, settlement, payments, Treasury auctions and market data. Over 90 entities participated in the test, and participants spanned across equities, options, fixed income, FX, payments, market data, and service bureaus, as well as a simulated Treasury auction and Fed Trade testing.
“In parallel, Regulation SCI entities completed their testing requirements with the industry. Regulation SCI requires that each SCI entity designate members and participants to take part in an annual business continuity and disaster recovery plan test, and SIFMA facilitates a coordinated testing program for the industry as part of our business continuity planning and disaster recovery work.
“The successful test results underscore the ability of the securities industry to operate through a significant emergency using backup sites, recovery facilities and backup communications capabilities across the industry.”
