CSE conducts successful live disaster recovery exercise

The Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) conducted a successful disaster recovery testing exercise, as a part of its Business Continuity Planning (BCP), from its Disaster Recovery site on Friday 3 July, where all trading and post trade operations took place from this remote site for a complete market day.

This is the first time such an exercise has taken place and demonstrates the commitment of the CSE to ensure the robustness of system infrastructure and the preparedness of the Exchange to face a sudden and unexpected event.

The successful exercise indicated that the CSE’s Business Continuity process is dynamic and the disaster recovery facility is fully functional and operational and therefore capable of carrying out all system critical processes in an eventuality. The disaster recovery exercise is expected to be carried out annually, to ensure the continued maintenance of the expected standards.

The market wide exercise included all market participants such Stockbrokers, Information vendors, ATS /CDS system suppliers, web site service provider, custodian banks and other market participants. This exercise enabled the CSE to test the preparedness of all participants in the event of a contingency. A site disaster scenario was created from 6:30 a.m. and the BCP plan was put into action soon after and all operations were switched to the backup site. All CSE mission critical staff operated from the disaster recovery site and functional market activities, including market surveillance, publishing of market announcements, CDS operations and end of day data processing, took place from this site. The entire exercise was observed and audited by a team of external on-site auditors.

The CSE has made a concentrated effort to enhance its processes and technology in order to ensure a smooth transition to a disaster recovery site and a retransfer of operations to its trading floor within the World Trade Centre premises. In 2013 the CSE implemented the latest and advanced Disaster Recovery Solution of the Automated Trading System with an objective of achieving the desired level of Recovery Time Objectives envisaged by the business. Corresponding to this activity the CSE continuously upgraded and invested in the latest technology infrastructures in areas such as the Wide area Network and Data Centre infrastructure to be more robust and resilient.

In 2014, the CSE obtained three International Standard Organisation (ISO) certifications in the areas of Information Security (ISO 27001), Business Continuity (ISO 22301) covering Trading, Registry and Depository services, and IT Service Management (ISO 20000) which demonstrates CSE’s commitment to improve its internal processes aligning to world class standards. CSE’s Business Continuity Processes therein conform to the Business Continuity (ISO 22301) standard.

“This assessment exercise was intended to test the robustness of our systems and processes to withstand any disaster and recover within a reasonable period of time and thereby identify any gaps in our business continuing planning. Our critical systems can be operational within a few hours from our disaster recovery facility. Furthermore our mission critical staff is trained to operate from this remote location,” Assistant General Manager of Enterprise Risk Management Lalin Paranavitana said.

“The market infrastructure of the CSE is state-of-the-art and therefore capable of withstanding any catastrophic incidents and ensuring the return to normal trading activity following a disaster. Our technical team follows a stringent process of contingency planning to ensure that all mission critical functions can operate in the event of unforeseen circumstances,” Chief Information Officer Chandrakanth Jayasinghe said.