The Application Of Disaster Recovery/Backup Technology In A Bank

With the development of information technology in the bank, the processing and data storage of most operation systems are being centralized in a consolidated environment that replaced the multi-center processing and decentralized data storage. This development, however, has brought new vulnerability to banks. For instance, if the data center that holds all the operating systems is hit by a disaster, it will result in huge disruption of those systems that affects all the domestic branches and almost all business lines. Such disruption will not only negatively impact banks' balance sheet, customer loyalty and reputation, but also has the potential to cause serious instability in the financial sector, and even to the society as a whole. Therefore, having sound disaster recovery and backup plan and infrastructure is very important for banks to improve their ability to deal with contingencies for better IT security.Based on knowledge of current disaster backup status of major domestic banks, the author synthesized key DR requirements for banking systems. By leveraging basic DR concepts and technology combined with international best practice, the author took requirements of credit card system as an example and derived a disaster backup and recovery plan.