Victor Yodaiken is president of FSMLabs, a provider of clock synchronization technology.
What were the major themes of your business in 2014?
Another year of market glitches, freezes and halts and a controversial book on financial markets has placed a tremendous amount of attention on financial market infrastructure. We have focused on helping our customers address many of these hiccups in 2014 by ensuring reliable, secure and auditable clock synchronization and time-stamping services.
What are your expectations for 2015?
Market participants must learn to ride the wave of market volatility and rethink their approach to technology to avoid future wipeouts and meet new regulatory requirements.
With regard to data governance and the consolidated audit trail, governments and global regulatory agencies in the U.S. and Europe have cited the importance of data integrity in market transactions. Initiatives like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Consolidated Audit Trail will require financial services institutions to examine their trading data in 2015 to ensure its precision down to the microsecond. These tighter rules are on their way faster than many are prepared to handle. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is currently in a comment period for a proposed rule that will lower business clock synchronization and time stamping requirements from one second down to 50 milliseconds which could impact audit best practices.