Following a series of market interruptions over the last few months, the U.S. self-regulatory organizations (SROs) have agreed on certain measures designed to protect market infrastructure.

The U.S. market SROs said Tuesday they have agreed on certain recommendations, and implementation plans, for a series of measures designed to strengthen the resilience, performance, disaster recovery capability and governance of the critical infrastructure of the U.S. capital markets, including the Securities Information Processors (SIPs). The specific details of their proposals will be set out in SRO rule filings and other amendments, which will be subject to public comment and approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The proposals come in the wake of several market interruptions, most notably a prolonged disruption that was traced to capacity problems at the SIP. The measures include steps designed to improve operational resiliency, strengthen interoperability standards and disaster recovery capabilities, enhance governance, accountability and transparency, and to establish a clear testing framework for the industry. They also set out a process for sharing best practices, reviewing policies and procedures of all operating committees, and updating technology change procedures, as well as improving audit and assessment processes, the SROs say.

The SROs say they have also established a path to identifying contingencies related to critical infrastructure items such as essential regulatory messaging, the open/close of the markets, initial public offerings, DTCC/OCC outages, singly-listed options and industry testing and connectivity to exchange disaster recovery facilities.

They’ve also agreed to three core principles for halting the equities and options market (transparency, limited discretion, and the coordination of halts/resumptions by the primary markets); and they say that proposed rules and metrics incorporating these key principles are under consideration among the SROs.

Additionally, the SROs are reconciling the trade-break rules among the exchanges for both equities and options markets; they are continuing to work on a proposed common “kill switch” for the equity markets; and, the options exchanges have agreed to refine and enhance their existing kill switch functionality.

The SROs say they have been working collaboratively in developing these recommendations, and that they will work with the SEC to finalize their recommendations.