T

he Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), following a crippling data interruption at the exchange on Monday, will start obliging data vendors to establish connections with the exchange’s data recovery center to prevent a possible reoccurrence, exchange officials say.

The bourse’s remote trading system encountered “technical problems” on Monday, that prevented most traders and investors from accessing trading data. The exchange then suspended, as well as cut short, trading sessions due to the snag.

The day’s problems caused trade volume to fall to approximately Rp 1 trillion (US$104.88 million), one-third of August’s daily average of roughly Rp 3 trillion.

Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said that a hardware malfunction at the main data facility was the source of the technical snag that impeded traders’ and investors’ ability to access trading data.

However, the hardware failure was not the sole cause of the data dim out, he noted during a talk with exchange officials on Tuesday.

He explained that the data recovery center took over the main system’s function, as supposed to when the latter hit a snag.

“However, although the data recovery center functioned well, not all data vendors who are connected to the main facility, are also connected to the data recovery center,” he said.

Hence, the unconnected vendors remained out of the loop once the center was in operation, leaving some securities to sit on their hands as others continued trading.

Data vendors are companies that receive data feeds from the exchange and distribute that information to third-parties, including securities and the media. There are roughly 29 data vendors that subscribe to the exchange’s data feed, based on information from the IDX’s website.

Agus added that some vendors were not hooked up to the data recovery center because such a connection was optional.

“Vendors connected to the core system were given the option to remain unconnected to the data recovery center,” he said.

He added that, due to the incident, the exchange would oblige vendors to build connections with the backup center.

“Data vendors, including those who use [IDX] information, connected to the main system must also be connected to the data recovery center,” he said.

He added that certain data vendors were reluctant to hook themselves up to the center because of the costs involved, although he did not specify the size of investment involved.

“Some of the vendors are not connected to the data recovery center because they have to invest in secure networks and the like, including in fiber optics,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ito Warsito, IDX president director, pointed out that only four of the data vendors were unconnected to the data recovery center, although he noted that some of the exchange’s members were slow to connect to the backup center.

“This is probably because the IT units of the exchange members were not readily available to switch the connection,” he said

He further added that the exchange would enforce the new obligation to connect to the backup center “as soon as possible”.

The bourse will amend the agreement data vendors must sign to receive the data feed, he added.

Ito said that the exchange apologized to “not only investors, but also to the public” for the system crash.