Stormy  weather cut power at 8am to a vital HBOS datacentre situated in Yorkshire. Power restored later in the morning used a back-up generator still left cash machines and other services not working until after 2.30pm. The incident left frustrated customers, while IT analysts questioned the business continuity arrangements at the bank.

“I’m absolutely astonished that a major high street bank could succumb to a power failure like that,” said (right) Trevor LaFleche, senior analyst at IDC Financial Insights. “There seem to have been no proper plans in place for a failover to alternative IT systems or to a new power system.”

Many banks failed to place enough emphasis on testing their disaster recovery, he said. “There are always unexpected scenarios, but something as basic as a power or network problem, you can be totally prepared for that.” In such a situation, banks needed immediate failovers to mirrored IT systems, or to alternative temporary power supplies, he said.

Chris Skinner, CEO (left) at financial think-tank Balatro called the incident “A bit of egg on their face for HBOS, and it does raise questions around their business continuity. [It] should have been better and you’d expect to switch to another datacentre in real time.” But, he addded, many high street banks still only had automatic failover systems in place for their “core banking, such as transactional systems”, and not for ATMs and branch banking.

In the US, upgrades needed
According to the Government Accountability Office, the FAA’s systems are overburdened by too much demand. Even in the current recession, the air transportation system is straining to meet all the demands, leading to delays or cancellations in one of five airline flights from January to October 2009, according to an October report from GAO. Problems are expected to worsen as the economy recovers and travel increases.

The FAA is moving to a Next Generation Air Transportation System, but that won't be complete until 2025. Improvements include integrated systems and procedures, aircraft performance capabilities, satellite-based surveillance and navigation and network-centric operations. Some changes are to be implemented between 2012 -18, but stakeholders are urging even quicker deployments.