Market regulator SEBI is planning to develop a cyber-capability index to measure the readiness of various Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs) to deal with potential hacking or cyber threats.
“SEBI is conducting a full cyber security review of MIIs that includes all the cyber security advisories issued by it and full list of cyber security threat vectors. In addition, a cyber-capability index is being developed to assess the cyber security preparedness and resilience of MIIs,,” SEBI said in its annual report.
Cyber security breaches pose a major challenge to market participants across the globe. In India, there has been no major hacking incident that has affected the market institutions so far. But with most transactions now being completed digitally there is always a danger of anti-social elements or enemy nation states wanting to create havoc in market infrastructure. To deal with this challenge, SEBI plans to expand the scope for cyber security initiatives for MIIs and also look into the operational modalities of implementation. Further, data privacy requirements are also intended to be put in place.
SEBI intends to deploy data analytics and new generation technologies to understand and handle challenges arising out of technological advancements in the market. SEBI proposes to introduce measures to address the issue of major announcements by listed companies so as to reduce the element of uncertainty in the market and to dis-incentivise misuse of unpublished price sensitive information by insiders.