We just got back from the TBA 4th Annual Technology Conference and despite the weather conditions, it was a great success. We were able to take almost the entire team down to enjoy the sessions and meet up and chat with some clients and vendors that we work with. Henry’s presentation got canceled due to the wintry conditions on Wednesday but I was able to present my topic on new Web technologies and the value of blogs, podcasts, and wiki’s to financial institutions.

Here is the PDF slides of the presentation for download. If you think this might be of benefit to someone else, please feel free to pass it on.

Also, we are going to be doing a podcast of the round table Henry was going to be presenting on and providing that to you here as well. Hope to have that to you in a week or two!

I felt the need to rant a bit about our teleconferencing service that we are most likely going to changing soon. We currently use Premiere Global Services for all of our conference calls with each other and our clients. We utilize the pay-per-use service which has worked out perfectly for us thus far. But we are now wanting to take it a step farther by allowing our teleconferences to be recorded and used for podcasting via this blog or on ITunes.

So as I was researching the capabilities, I was happy to see that Premiere does allow their users to record the calls but we, of course, want the file to be able to manipulate in our own way for syndication. So it was my surprise that they do not allow you to download the file at all. You can listen to it off their user-restricted site (and will charge you per minute for listening to it) but can’t download it. You can, however, buy a CD of the call for $16.00 plus shipping? $16.00 dollars?!? Are you kidding me? Who is going to pay that kind of money.

It is sad that they don’t understand the benefits of giving that file to their users for their reproduction. They don’t understand that they could create another revenue stream allowing customers to download the song, at a nominal fee, and allow the users to use it how they please. We would even be willing to pay a buck or two to download it (a la ITunes) but they don’t allow that. So we are going to look around for someone who does.

Have an IT audit for your financial institution coming up? Or need some guidance on your disaster recovery plan?  The Garland Group is here to help!  The following is a list of our most common disaster recovery findings for financial institutions of all sizes.  We use the FFIEC guidelines and our many years of information technology experience to come up with these recommendations and make your business operational as soon as possible after a disaster.

Our most common finding would have to be TESTING.  Alternate locations for core processing, network (Citrix, Windows 2003, etc.) and telecommunications should be tested at least annually for operability and connectivity to alternate branches.  For example, connections to the network and the core should be available from an alternate branch or location if your main site is unavailable.  While these critical functions should be tested annually, other functions should be tested as soon as they are implemented.  For instance, if you have an agreement with another bank to use their wire transfer system in an emergency, this should be tested close to the time of the agreement.  Why have an agreement with someone, if you are not 100% percent sure it will work when you need it to?

Next, financial institutions should list maximum downtime allowable and data loss for important functions.  This will help you decide what is mission critical and in devising a Business Impact Analysis.  For some institutions, 5 minutes without telecommunications and Internet would be unacceptable.  These businesses need automatic failover solutions, but if up to 4 hours are acceptable to be without telecommunications, these organizations could set up a different location to have phone calls forwarded to.  Furthermore if you want ATM’s to be your customer’s first alternative to tellers, be sure these are operational quickly in a disaster.  Listing maximum downtime allowable will help you with this next very common finding…..

The Information Technology Steering Committee should prioritize each department, business unit, business process, and application as to their importance in functionality of the bank.  This process should be conducted annually to let the Information Technology department know which servers and systems to shut down in case of an emergency or limited power.  Sometimes, if critical processes and applications are identified your customers may never know you had a disaster.  Ultimately, this is the goal, seamless interruptions to the customer!

Many common findings are due to a lack of updating the Business Continuity Plan itself.  In almost every audit we have findings dealing with updating vendor contact information, employee functions/responsibilities and new disaster recovery techniques.  This is where disaster recovery software helps and when the contact at your local service provider changes, you can update it once which replicates these changes throughout the plan.  Don’t forget to give updates to the plan to everyone who has a Disaster Recovery Plan.
Now, all you have to do is make sure you have a good plan in place to recover all business processes, especially the mission critical operations.  Once you have redundancy for critical functions, (and it is TESTED) just sit back and wait for a disaster so you can put your newly renovated plan into action!