This is the second in a series of information concerning Avian Flu (Pandemic) and how a financial institution can plan ahead and use this in their Business Continuity Plan.

The last blog listed different sections that a bank should consider and explore. We will look at Personnel, Equipment and Video Conferencing sections with this article.

Personnel · Explore the different positions in the bank that could be handled by working at home. · Determine the minimum number of persons that need to be at the bank to allow each department to function. · Determine the minimum bank personnel that need to interact with the public. Special areas may need to be set up with ventilation and glass walls and limited pass through slots. · Determine if some functionality can be done through a local PC in the lobby with forms customers can fill out that is not tied to the network but could be a pier to pier network or wireless. Security would be still an issue with the wireless. · Committee Meetings can be held through video or conference calls. The use of power point presentations may become common place but that entails much more time to prepare. · Consider staggered hours for employees.

Equipment · Personnel working out of the house will require PC’s or laptops. · The equipment will need to have an antivirus and firewall activated and updated daily. It will need to be encrypted including the hard drive. · Bank personnel will need a secure means of connectivity such as VPN, dial up networking, terminal services, etc. The equipment will have to be configured for remote connection and the accompanying security. · Alternate recovery locations may have be used to reduce contacts for IT staff. · Reflect on how IT can connect remotely to the home PC in the event they have a software problem. What to do if there is a hardware problem.

Video solutions/Connectivity · Video conferencing between branches and even between executives may become a means to keep everybody connected. · The Directors are also going to require a means to communicate and if meeting face to face becomes a problem then video conferencing, web conferencing, power point presentations, teleconferencing are all solutions. · Web conferencing can be used for those at home. · Use of the Intranet (banks website) for information purposes is a simple solution for those logged into the network.

These are a few items that the bank should consider when building a plan to handle the threat of Avian Flu.

By Gary Lauman, Senior Security Consultant with The Garland Group

Click here to read Part 1, Part 3, or Part 4 of this topic.