The effects of data loss on financial institutions can be tremendous. Banks have a large amount of data stored on their systems – usually consumer financial details. This makes it highly essential to have a reliable and secure data backup and recovery system ready for instant usage. Financial institutions need to archive, back up and recover data for successful continuous operation. According to the IT Performance Report of 2005, UK, banks and insurance companies suffer major tangible and intangible losses, amounting to a gross loss ratio of nearly £1.2 million. It has been noticed that a majority of card payment financial institutions and banks in the
The Effects of Data Loss:
- Data loss could affect the financial institution’s reputation and goodwill in the competitive market rendering it incapable of communicating with their customers. Loss of communicative data through emails, consumer financial details and records could work to negate the good performance reputation and responsibility of the financial institution. The loss of important communication could cause consumer grievance and succeed in the erosion of consumer confidence in the financial institution.
- The database of any financial institution such as a bank contains extremely important details of company loan details, financial procedures including company profit and loss accounts, employee records and personal consumer credit account details -- risk analytics systems for the identification of costs and benefits of financial products and to accurately determine the interest rate that must be used when lending money to the customer which are dependent on his or her credit score and history. Loss of these data, even for a small period of time, can cease bank operation and, in some cases, even lead to a permanent closure. When this happens, major financial upheavals in the lives of commercial enterprises and personal consumers can occur.
- Most of the decisions made by banks are generally based on the financial trends prevalent in the economy – what does the stock market hold – what is the interest rate on an average – what kind of personal loans are being given – what is the deposit and payment rate of loans to commercial businesses? Banks usually tabulate all this data and come up with new schemes and plans to incite customers. A loss of this data leads to a loss of the customer base and trust in the bank operations. It places a great question mark on the viability and reliability of the bank.
- Data loss poses many security-related issues in banks which have online service facilities. It could lead to the elimination of many records leaving the banking internal and external including bank systems and security vaults compromised and hapless. The bank comes to a standstill.
Other hassles caused by data loss include a waste of time and money resulting from either reproducing the data or attempting its recovery. Generally, data recovery is never full – this means that the bank and insurance firm may find themselves facing legal and financial hassles as data could be recovered in an incomplete format.
Data Recovery: Before attempting data recovery, every financial institution needs to ask itself a few important deciding questions:
- How long will the data recovery process take?
- What data was lost? Will it be possible to recover all the data and in what format?
- What was the exact cause of data loss?
Online Data Backup and Security:
- Fully automated
- Compresses and encrypts critical data
- Data transfer function to off-site high availability data centre facilities for maximum data protection
- The online data recovery system can be used for all kinds of computer failure ranging from virus attacks to firmware corruption to logical errors
- Provides instant data restoration in cases of data loss
RetroData: It is described as an organizational data security package equipped with a preventive measure to protect data providing for data recovery in original format in a scheduled time frame. The system is used extensively in banks and insurance companies. It is designed on internal and external data security control functions such as human data security and hardware security such as confidential passwords, automatic data lock systems and screening systems. It also has the ability to recover data from memory cards to workstation drives, RAID arrays and mass storage devices.
With the growth in online banking, hackers are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to gain customers credit card details and bank account information. If you are concerned that your computer-use is being monitored (using spyware or malware) Fields Computer Forensics (or Digital Forensics) experts are able to examine your system for evidence of intrusive activity.