An unplanned interruption can have a significant impact on operations, revenue and reputation. And it doesn’t have to be a fire, flood or hurricane to be a disaster. In fact, what’s more likely are events that are less dramatic but still have the potential to seriously disrupt your business. An accidentally cut cable. A security breach. A crashed server. Any of these might shut down your data center, bringing business to a standstill. Customers can’t make deposits or withdrawals. Tellers can’t access account information. Loans can’t get processed. To help prepare your data center for such disaster I’d recommend you read this Strategy Guide to Business Risk Mitigation for the Financial Services Industry from IDG, HP and Intel.
Although most financial institutions have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan in place, vulnerabilities tend to creep in over time. Many of these institutions operate with lean IT staffs and the focus is on keeping the systems running day to day. As the bank grows, IT systems are changed and expanded ad hoc, based more on operational needs than along the lines of a strategic plan. Acquisitions and mergers can add even more nonstandard technology to the mix. This results in an accumulation of equipment and technologies that is hard to manage, prone to failures, riddled with security problems, expensive to operate and vulnerable to disruption. Without realizing it, these organizations are operating in a house of cards. The crash of a single server may create a domino effect that brings the entire network down. The failure of a storage unit that was overlooked in a backup could mean the loss of business-critical data.
It doesn’t have to be this way. You can significantly improve your disaster recovery capability without a huge investment. This white paper show how by using the right technology and best practices you can significantly reduce the cost of preparing for and recovering from a disruption or a disaster. Click here to get this white paper.
