SEBI Introduces IT Resilience Index for Market Infrastructure Institutions

The Securities and Exchange Board of India has introduced a standardized IT Resilience Index tailored specifically for Market Infrastructure Institutions. This regulatory framework is designed to quantitatively assess, monitor, and elevate the cybersecurity capabilities and operational continuity standards of critical entities that form the backbone of India's capital market infrastructure.

Market Infrastructure Institutions encompass stock exchanges, depositories, and clearing corporations such as the NSE, BSE, NSDL, CDSL, and NCL. Given the surging transaction volumes and deep digital integration of modern capital markets, technical outages or cyber vulnerabilities in these core institutions pose severe systemic risks to national financial stability and investor confidence.

The IT Resilience Index measures institutional performance across core operational parameters, including high-availability system architecture, Disaster Recovery site switchover efficiency, and incident reporting speed. The new index works alongside SEBI's newly deployed Cyber Suraksha Portal and aligns cyber incident reporting formats with the standardized Financial Sector Cyber Incident Reporting framework.

Financial sector regulation and cyber resilience are key topics for SEBI Grade A, RBI Grade B, and UPSC examinations. Aspirants must understand SEBI's regulatory mandates under the SEBI Act 1992, the structural role of MIIs, and policy steps taken to mitigate systemic risk and operational downtime in national financial networks.