FINRA OATS Compliance
Securities industry brokers and dealers, as part of the legal requirements for record keeping and evidence management under OATS Rule 7430 (previously Rules 6953/6957), call the NIST ACTS Time Service in Boulder Colorado each morning in order to reset the system time on their computers. FINRA requires:
"All computer system clocks and mechanical time-stamping devices must be synchronized to any source within three seconds of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standard. All of your clocks and time-stamping devices must remain accurate within a three-second tolerance of the NIST clock, including
- The difference between the NIST standard and a time provider's clock;
- Transmission delay from the source; and
- The amount of drift of your clock."
Based on network latency, the large volume of calls hitting ACTS each morning and other issues, the effective tolerance is closer to one second. With the growing popularity of VOIP the movement of analog data over digital networks causes further problems. But now the securities industry can obtain local high-speed access to five regionally operated NIST-calibrated US Time servers to fully satisfy their OATS 7430 time-source requirements.
Certichron's DirectConnect™ service replaces NIST ACTS seamlessly and offers two access levels to dial-in time-setting and time-management services, improving the availability, reliability and accuracy of NIST calibrated stratum-1 services in securities trading and all other secured use requirements. The public access dial-in service program provides an unauthenticated free-ware NTP time setting like all free access NIST servers. Alternatively, Certichron's NIST-calibrated private access service provides a fully authenticated and logged time setting service which is stores an off-site record as 3rd party evidence of that time setting, a newly available service in trust processing.
Certichron’s operations meet all US and EU standards for time-service and certificate authority management agencies and provide its customer’s with the first third-party attested and provable national time-management service and stratum-1 NIST-calibrated services.
- Five Regional Timing Centers assures national accessibility with 12 more sites opening over the next 24 months to insure ubiquity.
- Based on today’s low networking costs the expense for connecting to the private access NIST-calibrated service is minimal.
- Provides secure or anonymous access to the NIST-calibrated service. Anonymous services access the Stratum-2 Service which is a 1:1 peer with the NIST-calibrated server and authenticated access is provided directly to the NIST service itself.
- Unique Time-Management Practice allows international entities to insure their time-management practice will support cross-border commerce and treaty dynamics
- With Certichron all transactions and operational communications that receive a time stamp can be traced to a NIST calibrated time source and each time setting event is fully logged and authenticated.
- As a neutral third party Certichron provides its customers testimony where necessary as to the authenticity and veracity of the time setting event.
Contact your Certichron Rep for access to the secured time services from Certichron’s audited time services bureaus or to setup a demonstration of the audited time services. Sales@Certichron.com or contact the sales office directly at 1 (800) 511-2301 9-5 PST.