Cloud Hosting

Once upon a time, maintaining a physical datacenter or cloud-based backup was an expensive proposition that only the largest financial institutions could afford. The cost of facilities, coupled with the management burden of keeping data in-sync and updated, became a budgetary blackhole for many institutions.

However, thanks to advances in virtualization and cloud technologies, modern data recovery options are now affordable for most banks and credit unions seeking to update their disaster recovery plan (DRP).

Even though natural disasters like hurricanes, tornados and ice storms tend to be rare, they have the potential to cause catastrophic damage to organizations that find themselves unprepared. Cyberattacks and data breaches, on the other hand, occur with increasing frequency. According to a recent Verizon report, 58% of all data breaches in 2020 targeted personal data.

But maintaining a DRP isnt just good for risk managementthere are compliance considerations as well. Disaster recovery planning for financial institutions is still required by regulators. GLBA, FFIEC, EFA and a host of other compliance requirements specific to financial institutions increase the compliance liability of banks and credit unions nationwide.

Currently, financial institutions have a few options for storing and recovering data during a disaster:

While on-premises, secondary datacenter and cloud data disaster recovery options are viable in todays data-first financial sector, the cloud recovery option offers a few advantages to institutions of every size.

The bottom line is that managing and storing data in the financial sector is a dynamic challenge that will only increase as digital channels further expand. Cloud data recovery offers a flexible, cost-effective and scalable option in a disaster recovery plan.

Steven Ward is vCIO manager at Computer Services Inc.

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5 advantages of a cloud disaster recovery plan - BAI Banking Strategies