FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

June 24, 2004
JS-1741

Treasury’s Roseboro Praises Efforts to Enhance the Resiliency of
the U.S. Financial Sector
at the New York Stock Exchange

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, Brian Roseboro, today joined the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), the Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC) and Con Edison Communications to announce that SIAC's Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI), has officially been joined by 600 financial services firms representing a majority of the investment community.   

"The SFTI network is one of the many important steps that the U.S. government and the private sector have taken to enhance the resiliency of the critical financial infrastructure and meet the challenges of the post - September 11th world.  By working together, we have made significant progress, but in this race, there is no finish line.  Our efforts to promote the safety and stability of the critical financial infrastructure will continue in order to prevent any future disorder from becoming a disruption," said Under Secretary of the Treasury Brian Roseboro.   

Today's announcement at the NYSE of the 600th member of the SFTI network is an important milestone, signifying that a majority of the investment community has taken an important step to prepare in the event of a major manmade or natural disaster. 

The Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure program is a private communication network offered by SIAC, a subsidiary of its parent companies the NYSE and the American Stock Exchange.  SFTI combines recovery, redundancy, and diversity to provide continuous telecommunications resiliency and a secure means of connecting to trading, clearing and settlement, market data distribution, and other SIAC services to member financial firms. 

All of SFTI's equipment, connections, power supplies and network links are redundant and its architecture features independent, self-healing fiber-optic rings, making it completely independent of all other telecommunications circuits and conduits. 

  SFTI's two ring infrastructure of physically diverse fiber-optic lines can withstand a single point of failure at any point on the fiber pathway. By replacing point-to-point circuits with a redundant ring infrastructure of fiber lines the SFTI network has no single points of failure.  Therefore, even if a SFTI fiber pathway is compromised, financial data traffic will continue to move uninterrupted along another pathway, improving the industry's protection against possible threats.  Additionally, instead of relying on point-to-point circuits to SIAC, users will connect to two or more access centers in the New York, Boston or Chicago area via their telecommunications carrier(s) of choice.  The fiber lines provided by Con Edison Communications are secure and managed by a highly sophisticated Network Operations Center.

SFTI is a product of SIAC, a technology subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange. SIAC is responsible for the design, development, implementation and operation of the exchanges' computer systems and communications networks.  SIAC operates clearance and settlement systems on behalf of the clearing corporations and disseminates U.S. market data worldwide. SIAC is also the company behind the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI), which is designed to meet the financial industry's need for a data communications infrastructure that is more resistant to man-made and natural disasters, while speeding recovery after a crisis.

As the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating critical financial infrastructure protection, the Treasury Department works closely with other federal and state financial regulators, as well as the private sector.  Treasury chairs the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Protection Committee, chartered under the President's Working Group on Financial Markets and charged with improving coordination and communication among financial regulators and the private sector to enhance the resiliency of the financial sector.