Following the implementation of a contingency plan for the release of market announcements, the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) continued to facilitate trading despite facing significant disruptions last week. According to reports from Reuters, NZX experienced four days of downtime due to persistent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which are believed to have originated offshore.

On August 31, 2020, the website went down shortly after NZX announced a collaboration with the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) for an alternate plan. A spokesperson for NZX acknowledged that the site was temporarily inaccessible but assured that trading activities were proceeding as usual through the established contingency measures.

Details regarding the attackers or any ransom demands were not provided by the spokesperson. However, NZX stated it is actively working with its network service provider, Spark, government cybersecurity agencies, and a US-based cybersecurity firm, Akamai Technologies, to enhance security protocols and prevent future incidents.