Too many critical back-up sites located in London, says FSA...
By Andy McCue
Published: 14 December 2005 12:30 GMT
Financial firms in the City of London risk being brought down by a terrorist attack or natural disaster because too many critical business functions and back-up sites are located close by within the capital.
The warning comes from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) following a resilience benchmarking project involving 60 of the UK's most significant firms and financial infrastructure providers.
The FSA said those businesses who represent the core of the UK's financial system have "highly resilient" IT systems and that they could recover critical functions rapidly following major operational disruption but warned there are several areas that need improvement.
Firms have been warned there is a "significant geographical concentration" of critical business functions and back-up sites in and around London that could be affected by a major incident and the FSA also expressed concern at the "high degree of reliance" on financial infrastructure providers, key telecoms providers and disaster recovery organisations.
Businesses have also been advised to move towards "more rounded" business continuity principles and address staffing issues as part of their plans. More than half of those who took part in the FSA's benchmarking survey currently have no plans for dealing with staff fatalities while others have not tested the feasibility of getting staff to alternative back-up sites.
The survey also highlighted lax security in some financial firms despite the high state of alert following the terrorist attacks in July with one in three respondents admitting they do not conduct background checks on new workers.
Hector Sants, managing director of the FSA's wholesale firms division, admitted improvements need to be made but said in the report: "It is encouraging that the project has established that the core parts of the financial system appear to have highly resilient IT systems that allow them to recover critical functions with impressive speed."
London's financial sector also undertook a simulated disaster recovery exercise in November to test preparedness for terrorist attacks, natural disasters or major infrastructure damage.
More than 1,000 people and 80 UK organisations took part in the test, which included simulations of car bomb attacks and casualties. KPMG is due to produce a report on the effectiveness of the disaster recovery planning early next year.
As the Infrastructure Manager you will be leading a team of six highly skilled individuals in the UK and India and liaising with the different R&D ...
You will have expertise in the area of Disaster recovery planning and backup strategies. You will have current in-depth knowledge and expertise of ...
SQL / Oracle DBA required with expertise in the area of Disaster Recovery (DR) planning and backup strategies and experience of manipulation of large ...
Agenda Setters 2009
Welcome to the ninth annual Agenda Setters poll – silicon.com's list of the top 50 most influential individuals in the technology and IT industries, from techies and CIOs to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Find out more in our latest special report.
Stories from the web...
Copyright © 2008 CBS Interactive Limited. All rights reserved. Top of page
Nick Beecham and Belinda Doshi
No more tax breaks for offshoring?
Financial services firms must prepare now for 2010 legal changes
Tim Ferguson
On a new Voyager, tackling fraud and the intellectual challenge
Interview: Nationwide IT director, Peter Stafford
Nick Heath
David Lister on smart grids and why he left RBS
Interview: National Grid CIO
Andy Jones
Why banks will push ahead with offshoring
Comment: Even if they don't want to
Catherine Stagg-Macey
Legacy IT holding back insurers
Comment: Economic crisis means finance giants must step lively
Julian Goldsmith
The City fund manager with no IT department
Q&A: How asset management is embracing the cloud...