It is a popular saying that we learn through making
mistakes. But what if we were able to educate people prior to making mistakes so
that they can be prevented altogether? Surely when it comes to disaster
recovery of IT infrastructure, in this fast moving technologically advanced
world it is too risky to take chances and let other businesses overtake you as
your systems fail. But we see time and time again businesses becoming
distracted with the money making side of their operation that protecting a
legacy of reputation and success seems to be thrown on to the back burner.
As we approach the end of 2013, it is time to focus on one
of the major lessons learned from disasters that occurred this year, so that we
can minimize the effects if similar disasters take place in 2014.
One of the best examples to focus on is the disaster centralized around the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), namely the IT outage that occurred
earlier this month which caused havoc among customers and business practices.
Unfortunately for RBS the IT outage occurred
on one of the busiest online shopping days of the year, often referred to as ‘Cyber
Monday.’ During the three hour downtime, more than one million customers
were unable to use their debit cards to make card payments, withdraw cash from ATMs
or use their online banking facility.
It definitely wasn’t the first time the Royal Bank of
Scotland (RBS) experienced an IT outage but by adopting a BMR solution in to
their business continuity plan for the future, it can hopefully be the last!
This incident followed a number of IT failures for RBS as another
system outage took place earlier in the year from a hardware failure which
prevented customers from accessing online banking, using ATM's and carrying out
point of service payments.
Even further, these incidents follow RBS’s largest catastrophic
IT meltdown which took place in June last year, where payments were held up and
balances were not updated for over a week.
While analysts have already described RBS’s technology as
outdated and question its resilience, the new CEO for RBS has even admitted
that RBS has neglected its technology by failing to have invested properly in
its systems for decades.
After being footed with a whopping £175 million bill in compensation
to their customers, and a huge dent in their reputation, it really is time for
RBS to invest properly in state of the art technology and software that
protects their IT infrastructure.
Let this be a lesson to all businesses who have not invested
in protecting their systems yet, and even those who do not carry out regular tests that the software solution in place can be relied upon if a disaster
strikes.
Do not follow in the footsteps of RBS. Instead, invest in protecting your systems today. Cristie Software: predictable recoveries in an unpredictable world. To find out more contact a member of our sales team on: or by using any of the links below:
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