Bank of New York Fedwire software failure
A software failure left Bank of New York unable to redeliver government securities to counterparties, forcing it to borrow a then-record $22.6 billion overnight from the Federal Reserve's discount window to cover the resulting gap.
The damage was public. The root cause was preventable.
A software failure left Bank of New York unable to redeliver government securities to counterparties, forcing it to borrow a then-record $22.6 billion overnight from the Federal Reserve's discount window to cover the resulting gap.
What the software actually got wrong
A software defect in BoNY's securities-processing system caused it to lose track of its own ability to redeliver securities it had received as an intermediary, and the bug went undetected until the backlog had become unmanageable.
A software defect in BoNY's securities-processing system caused it...
A software defect in BoNY's securities-processing system caused it to lose track of its own ability to redeliver securities it had received as an intermediary
Requs AI Edge Case flags this exact pattern at the requirements and architecture stage — before a single line of code implementing it exists — so the assumption behind it gets challenged while it is still cheap to fix.
The bug went undetected until the backlog had become...
the bug went undetected until the backlog had become unmanageable
Requs AI Software FMEA traces this failure mode back to the system-level hazard it feeds, tagging it against the Common Defect Enumeration so it surfaces in review instead of in the field.
Beyond code coverage and "shall" testing
Root causes like this one rarely show up in code coverage or requirements-compliance testing, because nobody wrote a requirement anticipating the specific edge case that broke. Requs AI Edge Case and Requs AI Software FMEA are built to surface exactly this class of overlooked failure mode — before the software is written.
Surfaces this before code exists
Identifies edge cases like this one at requirements and architecture time, using the Common Defect Enumeration to catalog failure patterns seen across hundreds of real-world software failures — including this one.
Connects the failure mode to the hazard
Traces this class of root cause directly to the system-level hazard it can produce, so a defect pattern like this one gets flagged during design review instead of after it ships.
Find the overlooked root causes before they ship.
Schedule a demonstration, or explore how Requs AI Edge Case and Software FMEA use the Common Defect Enumeration.