Bangkok--Nov 14--PC & Associates Consulting
MAJOR STUDY FINDS AT LEAST 86% OF THAI FINANCE SERVICES ORGANIZATIONS RELY ON STORAGE BACK UP AND ARCHIVE 57% of Banks, 50% of Insurers, 11% of brokerages to upgrade backup/disaster recovery by next 3-12 months
To comply with the multitude of local regulations around information protection and availability, at least 86% of the Thai finance services organizations rely on storage backup and archive to ensure data availability according to a study by Financial Insights (an IDC Company), The purpose of the study, commissioned by EMC Corporation, is to find out the regulations around information retention, data protection and the state of readiness of the Thailand’s financial institution to comply with those regulations and the strategies to turn compliance into business advantage.
The Financial Insights study found that although the bulk of financial services organizations are aware of compliance to business continuity and disaster recovery mandates and the existence of BC plans, studies have shown that less than fifty percent (50%) of financial services organizations typically meet an acceptable portion of their recovery objectives with the business processes and infrastructure is being less protected in reality than as perceived.
As almost the whole financial services industry realize they are at risk, 57% of banks, 50% of insurers and 11% of brokerages surveyed will focus on upgrading their business continuity infrastructure over the next 12 months. The upgrades include the key enabling technology for business continuity — continuous data protection (CDP) which enables desktop and server data backup in real time on a regular basis, reducing downtime and eliminating the need for daily or weekly batch backups.
“The Thai financial services industry will enter into a new adjustment period over the year as regulators pave the way for the market to meet international standards. Compliance issues are starting to aggressively driving storage and archiving demands, while business continuity continues to be a major challenge,” said Dr. Tatchapol Poshyanonda, Country Manager, EMC Thailand.
Cyrus Daruwala, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Research and Consulting, Financial Insights, said, “From a business continuity and disaster recovery point of view, financial institutions in Thailand are at various stages of preparedness — some impressively ready, and some scarily absent. We think this is predominantly due to the lack of stringent guidelines and penalty enforcements by the respective regulators.”
Among the other key findings:
ท Thai FSIs generally do not test their BC/DR plans that regularly. 4 in 10 test only on an annual basis albeit the security companies conduct more regular tests every 3-6 months.
ท The principal threats to business continuity are data security failure (43-50% ranked as an “extreme threat”) and data center hardware/software failures (14-44% as “extreme threat”).
ท On average, system failures from hardware/software and IT systems malfunction occurred 1-3 times (for 56-75% of respondents) within the last 12 months. The remaining companies surveyed (22-29%) encountered system failures 3-5 times, whilst 1 out of the 4 insurers (25%) and 2 out of the 9 securities (22%) companies claimed a clean record for the same period.
ท In the event of a failure, recovery time for system outages averages 6-12 hours for banks and security companies, with the insurers currently requiring in excess of 24 hours for their operating systems to be operational. The BoT requirement of a recovery within 24 hours for the banks is in stark contrast against the 4-hour international recovery standard recommended by the US Fed, OCC and SEC.
ท Top security concerns include network threats from the likes of unauthorized network use and interception of information during transmission (25-57% ranked as “top concern”), and application threats from viruses and worms (29-50% as “top concern”).
ท Consequently, the majority sees the need to spend on improving application & infrastructure architecture and to comply with internal security policies and government regulations (25-86% ranked regulations at the “most important” factor for security spending).
ท FSIs interviewed have invested predominantly in software for document management (33-75% surveyed) and web-content management (25-50%).
EMC in Financial Services
EMC solutions are currently installed in all of the Fortune 500 securities firms, 24 out of the top 25 banks, and 45 of the top 50 insurance companies. EMC business continuity solutions are used by 75 percent of these financial services firms.
EMC compliance and enterprise content management solutions help enable compliance, minimize legal risk, and reduce costs. EMC tiered storage platform solutions—including EMC Centera content addressed storage systems for active archiving—enable financial services organizations to safely and cost effectively build the information infrastructure needed to meet current and future compliance demands.
About Financial Insights, an IDC Company
Financial Insights provides independent research, custom consulting, and detailed multiclient studies on the technology issues and challenges facing the financial services industry. Our global research covers topics of strategic importance to corporate and retail banks, insurance carriers, asset management firms, securities and brokerage firms. Our local practices in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Canada add an in-depth regional viewpoint. Financial Insights, an IDC company, is headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, USA. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading IT media, research, and exposition company. Visit www.financial-insights.com for more information.
About EMC
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.thailand.EMC.com.
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