Simplified MiFID-II Compliance with Endace DAG Provenance

Auckland, NZ, October 12, 2016. Endace, a world leader in high-speed network monitoring and recording technology, today announced the launch of Provenance™, a new feature available for its high-speed DAG™ Data Capture cards. Provenance enables recorded network traffic to be enriched with information about the state of the environment at the time the traffic was recorded -- including detailed real-time information about timing sources and accuracy.

Under upcoming MiFID-II regulations, traders must not only record all trade data, but also ensure trade events are accurately time-stamped to within microseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) along with information about the reliability of the timing source. Being able to perpetually describe the accuracy of time stamps means continually monitoring and recording timing accuracy as trade data is captured. Provenance provides a way for traders to capture contextual information at the source, helping them to comply with regulations easily.

Provenance “watermarks” traffic every second as it is captured, enriching it with information--such as what timing source was used, how clocks were synchronized (using PTP, 1PPS or IRIG-B) and what the clock synchronization accuracy was at the time of capture. This allows traders to prove exactly what the status and accuracy of clocks and time stamps were at the time trade data was captured.

Currently, more than 150 fields of Provenance data such as Hostname, Linkname and Optical Power Level can be included. This makes it simple for traders to accurately determine the origin of capture files and provides a clear evidential trail that can be easily examined in packet analysis tools, such as Wireshark™.

Endace is a long-standing supporter of the STAC Benchmark Council, a community of financial institutions and vendors collaborating to develop technology benchmark standards for the financial industry. Endace CTO, Dr. Stephen Donnelly attended STAC’s MiFID-II Workshop in London in June. Following the workshop, Endace accelerated plans to introduce Provenance to help traders meet MiFID-II’s strict timing requirements.

“Provenance is broader than just timing, it allows a wide range of enriched, ‘smart data’ to be embedded into network traffic as it’s recorded. We see applications across a range of areas including network security,” Dr Donnelly said. “But we saw an immediate application for Provenance to deliver a simple, effective way to enable traders to meet their obligations under MiFID-II and related regulations. So we accelerated plans to introduce Provenance to give traders time to test and implement it ahead of MiFID-II”.

Endace has introduced Provenance support in a firmware upgrade available immediately for its two port 1/10 GbE DAG10X2-S and DAG10X2-P cards and four port 1/10/40GbE DAG 10X4-P card. Provenance is a key feature which will be rolled out across all Endace products, and will be introduced in EndaceProbe™ Network Analytics Platform in the new 6.3 release of OSm scheduled to ship early in 2017.