A platform outage policy is the part of a broker's terms setting out what happens when the trading platform, the price feed or the client's own connection fails: whether orders already resting on the server remain live, what alternatives exist for closing a position, and what the firm accepts responsibility for.
The practical distinction is between server-side orders, which the broker holds and can still trigger while your terminal is down, and client-side orders, which exist only on your machine and do nothing if it is not running. Most agreements also provide a telephone dealing desk as the fallback and disclaim liability for losses caused by internet or third-party failures. The time to establish which orders are server-side, and to have the dealing desk number recorded, is before an outage rather than during one.
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