With the growing number of traders and brokers using its trading platform, NSE knew that its existing security solution would not be adequate to meet its objectives. It deployed a comprehensive Web filtering solution from Websense to squash security breaches by nipping them in the bud, writes Varun Aggarwal
Stock exchanges handle some of the most humongous workloads imaginable, more so than any other IT setups across industry verticals (barring perhaps only scientific work also known as High Performance Computing). In a growing market such as India, stock exchanges have to handle tremendous workloads as the number of traders and brokers keeps increasing and with mutual funds growing in a big way in the recent past, it has only added to the pressure on the Exchanges’ IT systems. Across the globe, developments in information, communication and network technologies have created paradigm shifts in the securities market operations.
Technology has enabled organizations to build new sources of competitive advantage, bring about innovations in products and services, and to provide new business opportunities. Stock exchanges across the world have realized the potential of IT and have moved over to electronic trading systems, which are cheaper, have a wider reach and provide a better mechanism for trade and post trade execution.
Technology has enabled organizations to build new sources of competitive advantage, bring about innovations in products and services, and to provide new business opportunities. Stock exchanges across the world have realized the potential of IT and have moved over to electronic trading systems, which are cheaper, have a wider reach and provide a better mechanism for trade and post trade execution.
Such a critical work environment makes it binding for stock exchanges to ensure better uptime. This cannot be achieved without putting multiple levels of security in place.
NSE has played a catalytic role in reforming the Indian securities market in terms of microstructure, market practices and trading volumes. The market today uses state-of-art information technology to provide an efficient and transparent trading, clearing and settlement mechanism, and has witnessed several innovations in products and services viz. demutualization of stock exchange governance, screen based trading, compression of settlement cycles, dematerialization and electronic transfer of securities, securities lending and borrowing, professionalize trading members, fine-tuned risk management systems, emergence of clearing corporations to assume counter-party risks, market of debt and derivative instruments and intensive use of information technology.
Network Infrastructure at the NSE
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India has one of the largest network infrastructure setups in India. The telecommunications network uses the X.25 protocol and is the backbone of the automated trading system (X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for connection to packet switched wide area networks using leased lines, the phone or ISDN systems as networking hardware). Each trading member trades on the NSE with other members through a PC located in the trading member’s office, anywhere in India.
The Exchange uses powerful RISC -based UNIX servers, procured from Digital and HP for the back office processing. Software platforms like Oracle 7 RDBMS and Oracle FORMS 4.5 Front - Ends, etc. have been used for the stock exchange’s applications. The stock exchange currently takes care of its own data center operations, system and database administration, design and development of in-house systems and design and implementation of telecommunication solutions.
NSE is one of the largest interactive VSAT-based stock exchanges in the world. Today, it supports more than 3,000 VSATs. The NSE network is the largest private wide area network in the country and the first extended C-Band VSAT network in the world. Currently more than 9,000 users are trading on the real-time online NSE application.
| About NSE |
| The National Stock Exchange of India Limited had its genesis in the report of the High Powered Study Group on Establishment of New Stock Exchanges, which recommended promotion of a National Stock Exchange by financial institutions to provide access to investors from all across the country on an equal footing. Based on therecommendations, NSE was promoted by leading financial institutions at the behest of the Government of India and was incorporated in November 1992 as a tax-paying company unlike other stock exchanges in the country. On its recognition as a stock exchange under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956 in April 1993, NSE commenced operations in the Wholesale Debt Market (WDM) segment in June 1994. The Capital Market (Equities) segment commenced operations in November 1994 and operations in Derivatives segment commenced in June 2000. |
Filtering traffic
In addition to the trading network, NSE also has Internet connectivity, which is used for browsing and e-mail. “We used to regulate our outgoing Internet traffic and not incoming traffic,” said Narayan Neelankantan, Manager-Telecom-NSE. He added, “It is a part of the infrastructure where internal people browse the Internet. We use Websense Enterprise, a Web filtering solution to manage Internet access for our 1,000-plus employees or contractors.” NSE has also opted for Security Filtering, an offering of Websense’s categories for filtering. This blocks peer-to-peer and streaming apart from restricting spyware, bots and keyloggers.
NSE deployed the Websense solution in 2000. Explained Neelankantan, “In 2005, we carried out a review to see if we needed to upgrade. We evaluated a competitive solution and found that Websense was more suitable for our needs. Websense has a huge database of URLs. Additionally, it had better categorization and URL identification.”
NSE integrated the product with its firewall, and was using it purely for Web filtering. But with Internet threat burgeoning, it opted for a standalone deployment and since then it has not experienced any major security problems in the last seven years.
Neelankantan explained now there is a single interface through which all the traffic is mirrored to Websense and based on the policies deployed, it can carry out URL filtering and protocol level filtering. One of the benefits is that it is not inline, so the traffic does not passes through Websense. So in case something goes wrong the Websense server crashes for instance-browsing can still continue without interruption.
| Benefits achieved |
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Explicit categorization
One of significant benefit of Websense Enterprise is that the URL categorization is good. “Other products mostly have global categories. But in Websense products, even within the global category, there are several more explicit categories—which introduce a lot of flexibility. A sub-category can be allowed or restricted,” elaborated Neelankantan.
IP address categorization is an added benefit. Neelankantan added, “If my security team needs to access a Web site that other users would never need-such as hacking sites—I can create a separate group of their IP addresses, and I can allow just those people to access those sites.” He added, “We can also put in multiple levels of policies. One level is global-applicable to all, and there can be individual policies that are applicable to smaller groups.” NSE is happy with Websense’s products and has recently upgraded to Websense Security Suite, which offers Web protection services as well. Staying protected is critical for NSE and Websense Enterprise is helping the stock exchange to do just that.