BATS Tests Disaster Recovery Site for US Businesses for 2nd Time in 2013

BATS Global Markets said that it successfully operated its US businesses from its disaster recovery (DR) site yesterday as part o its business continuity planning process.

This marked the second time that BATS has operated its US businesses from it DR site, with the first time occurring in March 14th.

The move on BATS part comes two weeks after Nasdaq OMX had a problem with its securities information processor (SIP), which was unable to failover to a backup system.

As part of the BCP test, the company’s global headquarters in Lenexa, Kansas was disconnected from all outside network access for the entire day, mirroring what could happen in an actual disaster situation. All of BATS’ Kansas City-based employees reported to the DR site and conducted their daily routines from the secure and remote location, the company said in today’s announcement. Meanwhile, the BATS offices in New York City and London conducted their normal operations.

Exchanges periodically test their disaster recovery sites, so they are able to shift business operations to an alternative BCP location if and when disaster strikes. The moves comes nearly a year after Hurricane Sandy hammered the Northeast region last October, leading exchanges including the NYSE, Nasdaq, BATS, Direct Edge, to close their US equity markets for several days because it was unsafe for NYSE market makers and brokerage house to commute to work in the NYC area.

“For the second time this year BATS was successful in taking our headquarters facility completely offline with no disruption in our service or performance for our customers, who were unaware any location change had taken place,” stated Joe Ratterman, chief executive officer of BATS Global Markets. “Business continuity planning and infrastructure redundancy are of the utmost priority at BATS and we will continue to test our plans regularly, often times in actual production conditions like we did yesterday, to ensure we are well-prepared to handle any unanticipated issues if or when they might arise in the future.”

While yesterday marked the second time BATS’ primary office was completely disconnected from outside network access, the company does test its DR site monthly. For one full day each month since 2008, the company’s Operations, Technology, Regulatory and Surveillance teams have operated from the DR site, with the primary headquarters remaining online.

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio