Feasibility of sharing recovery space and technology as a strategy for business continuity planning demonstrated

The US-based Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) has announced the successful completion of its business continuity / shared recovery space initiative. FSTC members demonstrated the feasibility and value of sharing recovery space to reduce costs and risk for financial institutions, developed an initial set of best practices and definitions for sharing recovery work space on both a regional and national basis, and created a vision of a FSTC ‘business continuity clearinghouse’ as a forum for future cooperation and work on business continuity planning.

The 90-day ‘Shared recovery space’ project included: Bank of America, Comerica, Compass Bank of Birmingham, AL, National City, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Mastercard, IBM, SunGard, the Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), and other FSTC member companies.

During the project, FSTC helped banks who had recovery space available, and those who were searching for recovery space, locate each other and explore bi-lateral sharing arrangements.

The FSTC project team crafted an initial set of best practices for work-area recovery and laid a foundation for interoperable recovery space. These included, for example, minimum requirements for a work area recovery site, from data-processing requirements, to workstation size, to site security needs.

"The project proved that financial institutions can better prepare for continuing critical business operations during an event by cooperating," said Charles Wallen, senior vice president, Bank of America. "We now have a group of financial service providers with common intent and common challenges exchanging information on work recovery issues in a formal, structured forum and have set up the conditions for more extensive collaboration in actually creating shared work spaces to reduce risk and cost."
Representatives of other participating financial institutions agree. "We proved that we can gain great value by working together," said Aaron Gani, senior vice president at Wachovia. "We are incorporating many of the ideas we shared during this project into the processes of our organisation."

That sharing of information and ideas proved to be the primary benefit of the project. "As a result of this project, I know I can pick up the phone and discuss our situation and challenges before and during a disaster," said Aaron Meckler, corporate business continuity planning compliance officer at Wells Fargo. "Knowing people who understand the challenges faced by our institutions and industry is unique and powerful."

For the future, the FSTC project team documented a vision of a business continuity clearinghouse that would function as an umbrella structure with the purpose of coordinating FSTC's activities in the business continuity space:
* Modelling and proving shared space agreements, operations and business practices for financial institutions.
* Defining best practices and environments for recovery facilities, including standardising requirements for personnel, workspaces, technology, and overall operations and processes.
* Developing and sharing technology best practices for various recovery scenarios, to shorten recovery times, reduce costs, and leverage technology solutions.
* Exploring personnel issues associated with incidents, and how best to effectively continue business operations with these issues in mind.

"We are impressed and encouraged by the discovery that institutions that have space, and those needing space, can find a basis for sharing this critical information," said Zachary Tumin, FSTC executive director. "The project team not only developed working tools for recovery space collaboration but most importantly shared ideas and methods that contributed directly to improving their operations."

The FSTC project builds on momentum within the financial industry toward cooperation on business continuity planning. "There is significant benefit to our individual companies and to the financial services industry as a whole in sharing best practices and potential business recovery resources," said Ken Schaeffler, first vice president of information security/business recovery at Comerica. "Cooperative efforts such as this will improve our effectiveness and efficiency in planning for and responding to disruptive events in the future."

Next steps
As a result of the ‘Shared space’ initiative's success, FSTC seeks participation from additional financial institutions, industry vendors, and associations in the next phase of its activities. The group currently has two initiatives in formation:
* Shared recovery space phase two: developing agreements and operations for actual shared space arrangements among participating members.
* Technology best practices expertise center: defining and standardising the best practices necessary to accelerate recovery times, lower cost, and increase the effectiveness of recovery solutions

Interested parties are asked to contact FSTC executive director Zachary Tumin, at +1 (914) 576 7629 or zachary.tumin@fstc.org or Jim Salters, FSTC director of technology initiatives and project development at +1 (513) 405 0717 or jim.salters@fstc.org

•Date: 10th October 2003 •Region: N.America •Type: Article •Topic: Recovery fac.
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