Aussie banks ill-prepared for future viruses
Aussie banks ill-prepared for future viruses
Following the recent disaster at Westpac, when it was brought to its knees by the Sasser worm, new research has revealed that the majority of Australian financial institutions are not prepared for these kind of crises.
The University of Southern Queensland's Centre for Australian Financial Institutions (CAFI) and Fuji Xerox surveyed the four big Australian banks, ten other banks including subsidiaries of foreign banks and fourteen credit unions and building societies.
The research found that although 78 percent of financial institutions are committed to business continuity management, nearly 40 percent of institutions either do not have a crisis management plan or the plan has been documented without testing or validation.
57 percent have invoked BCM plans in response to a major threat or crisis. They felt that business continuity helped in 73 percent of brief cases, but they were not sure that BCM would help in a sustained crisis.
Seven risk areas were identified by the companies. These included: consolidation, globalisation, outsourcing, governance, economy, information technology and operations. IT being the largest risk.
Zohyd Rateb, general manager of strategy and development at Fuji Xerox Australia, which offers business continuity solutions to companies, said. "The problem is that as organisations strive to get bigger and develop, they level of risks increases too. IT is the glue that keeps the different parts together, but any holes in the infrastructure will obviously increase with growth. Globalisation has also caused the dangers to intense. Companies are linked together, so disasters in New York, could also cause problems in Perth, if the businesses are connected."
Glen, Van Der Vyer, a researcher from the Department of Information Systems at the University of Southern Queensland suggested possible solutions for enterprises, small and medium sized businesses. "Enterprises seem to be concentrating too much on the wrong risks. There is a big difference between perceived risk and real risk, and this is the area we have been researching into.
"Enterprises need to learn how to cope with this modern age of unpredictable problems. So we think they should invest in IT Swat teams, that simulate potential crises before they happen. That way, companies will be prepared for any possible problems that might happen. Smaller and medium sized companies obviously can't afford these Swat teams, so we suggest that they set up a forum amongst themselves, where they can discuss common ideas to tackle problems which hit aspects of the same industry."
Rateb gave an example of how banks could help each other. He said that if one bank experienced processing problems, then it would be a good idea to have access to another bank's processing systems to fulfil the necessary tasks in a time of disaster.
He believes that companies should share resources more often to help each other cope with catastrophes, and competition should be put to one side when huge problems hit each industry.
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