The European Central Bank (ECB) is set to launch an independent review of an incident that affected its real-time gross settlement system TARGET2 on 23 October 2020, causing an outage for almost 10 hours.
An initial investigation determined that a software defect in a network device was the specific technical cause of the incident.
The independent review will also take into account other incidents that affected TARGET Services during 2020.
This will include those affecting, directly and indirectly, TARGET2 Securities (T2S), the securities settlement platform operated by the Eurosystem.
ECB explained the independent review will allow the Eurosystem to draw lessons from the incidents and address them.
“It will look into the robustness of the business continuity model, the adequacy of the regular recovery tests, the efficiency of the change management procedures and the communication protocols. The main findings of the review will be shared with market participants and made public by Q2 2021,” ECB commented.
According to the bank, the Eurosystem is committed to identifying lessons learned from the recent incidents in full transparency and taking action accordingly in order to continue providing highly efficient and reliable financial market infrastructures to European agents.
