Finance Ministry asks PSBs to review
their IT disaster preparedness
The Union Finance Ministry (FinMin) has instructed
public-sector banks (PSBs) to review their information technology (IT) systems,
especially the disaster recovery channels, a senior government official said,
requesting anonymity.
The regulator (Reserve Bank of India) conducts its
own audits regularly. We have also requested major PSBs to evaluate their
disaster recovery channels, where banks maintain data in parallel, said the
senior government official.
In case a bank headquartered in Mumbai stores backup
data in another seismic zone, if one channel stops functioning, the other will
automatically activate without causing any disruptions for customers, the
official said.
Implementing such a system requires significant
investment, the official said. A query sent to FinMin remained unanswered till
the time of going to press.
Testing the disaster preparedness of various
segments of the financial market has gained prominence in the recent past. On
May 18, the Indian stock markets, such as BSE and NSE, conducted special
trading sessions in the equity and derivative segments to evaluate their
disaster preparedness in the event of major disruptions. Both exchanges
underwent an intraday switch from the primary site to the disaster recovery
site during this session.
Initially, the government official said, the major
banks, such as State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda, and Canara Bank, had
been asked to assess their disaster recovery systems. The outcomes were
positive. We will also examine other PSBs, he added.
On May 9, SBI Chairman Dinesh Khara announced the
state-run bank was in the process of recruiting approximately 12,000
individuals for various positions, including IT. Khara mentioned that these new
recruits would receive initial exposure to banking operations, with the
possibility of transitioning to IT and other associated roles later on.
Around 11,000 to 12,000 employees are in the hiring
process. These are general employees, but we actually have a system where at
our associate level and officers' level, around 85 per cent of them are
engineers. We give them some exposure to understand banking, and thereafter, we
start channeling them into various associate roles, and some of them will be
channeled into IT, Khara said.
In an interview with Business Standard earlier this
month, Punjab National Bank Chief Executive Officer Atul Kumar Goel said the
bank s focus on digital and human resources transformation over the past year
had strengthened the systems for cybersecurity.
SBI's digital adaptation has surged from 84 per cent
in FY23 to 89 per cent in FY24. While Canara Bank's digital transactions surged
48.1 per cent Y-o-Y in FY24, PNB's jumped 62 per cent Y-o-Y during the same
year. Meanwhile, BoB achieved a total digital transaction rate of 94 per cent
in FY24.
www.business-standard.com
dt. 22-05-2024