Whether the business is ready to reserve the financial sector of Russia

Recently IT departments of the Russian and foreign companies of the financial sector even more often face questions of business continuity of the organization. Risk of emergence of unforeseen situations and expediency of investment of means into reservation – topical issues for the Russian business.

Research purpose was diagnostics of the current situation and identification of top trends in the field of ensuring continuity and recovery of activity in the companies of the financial sector. The research was conducted from July to August, 2010.

More than 70% of the polled companies made the international and Russian banks, brokers, representatives of insurance, fund and management companies were among other respondents. Most the companies - representatives of large business with an annual turnover from 3 to 15 billion rubles and more.

Results of a research showed that the scope of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities is relevant and has serious support from the management of financial companies. A positive factor which speaks about development of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities of function is the high percent of the companies having sponsorship of initiatives of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities at the highest level – from owners of business and top management. However if to compare the Russian and international companies, the majority of factors indicates more serious development of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities of function in the foreign companies that it is caused not only need to secure the business, but also requirements of corporate policy.

• About 70% of the polled respondents set the high importance of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities, and for the large and foreign companies the high relevance of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities was mentioned in most cases.
• About 50% of the polled companies as a strategic objective of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities set recovery of business processes, and only 13% of respondents were limited to problems of recovery of IT services.
• Among the ensuring continuity and restoration of activities internal drivers as pacing factors IT, risk management and information security were selected.
• 75% of the foreign companies have high support of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities from top management, the budget selected with ensuring continuity and restoration of activities and the responsible board member while the Russian companies such - only 23%. An interesting trend is what in the ensuring continuity and restoration of activities foreign companies does not submit to IT, and in most cases - to the CEOs and risk management while in the Russian ensuring continuity and restoration of activities companies substantially submits to Chief information officers.

Based on a research blackout, failure of operation of the IT equipment, telecommunication systems and also a human factor and failures when updating IT systems were called the reasons of the most frequent risks causing failures in work of the companies. These factors are especially relevant for Russia, but at professionally developed strategy of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities and reserve infrastructure similar risks are minimum, practically come down to zero. So, most the polled companies are going to use commercial data center for the purpose of reservation (42%) in the nearest future. 25% of respondents have own reserve center, and more it belongs to large business – 45% of the companies with turnover of 3-5 billion rubles and 27% of the companies with turnover over 15 billion rubles. It is obvious that for large business the risk factor and value of possible losses are much higher, the importance of reserve infrastructure respectively increases. Though concerning a factor of reliability of reserve infrastructure when choosing third-party DPC the companies so far first of all are guided by the cost of services and only then look at experience and level of reliability of external DPC.

The strategy of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities at the Russian companies generally is present only as making IT strategy while in most the foreign companies the strategy of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities represents specially developed, the document which is annually updated and signed with the management. In most the ensuring continuity and restoration of activities foreign companies is separate function and has integration about crisis management. At the Russian companies in most cases ensuring continuity and restoration of activities in separate function is not selected and has no integration about crisis management. As a result, in the Russian companies the current activities for ensuring continuity and restoration of activities correspond to the accepted strategy in much smaller degree, than in the foreign companies.

When implementing ensuring continuity and restoration of activities the lack of resources and the budget, understanding of need of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities in the companies and personnel training were called key problems.

Nikolay Legkodimov, the senior manager of risk management department and compliance of KPMG in Russia and the CIS, notes: "The conducted research showed high relevance of questions ensuring continuity and restoration of activities for the financial sector. At the same time the research showed that questions ensuring continuity and restoration of activities are focused mainly in information technology field. The IT is the main driver of development of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities today, the considered key risks are also connected with ensuring availability of IT services. Today the dependence of business on effective work of IT infrastructure is obvious. The continuity of work of business applications, online availability became questions of viability of the companies. Focus on IT as bases of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities creates high potential as for providers of services of data centers due to creation of the failsafe and reserved IT infrastructure, and for providers of services in support of applications and IT infrastructure due to inclusion of questions ensuring continuity and restoration of activities in structure of the services offered by them".

"To us as to ensuring continuity and restoration of activities solution providers, the research helped to see current trends of development of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities in the Russian market, obstacles which market participants at initiation face, development of strategy and implementation of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities. Results of a research on the Russian financial companies are of special interest. The Russian companies began to approach more in a complex questions ensuring continuity and restoration of activities, putting business processes as a main objective of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities of an initiative. Support of ensuring continuity and restoration of activities of initiatives from management is recognized as insufficient, and here we see high potential for development. This research will help us to deepen understanding of the existing tasks facing financial institutions and to offer effective ways of their solution based on network of our DPCs" – Lobanov Vladimir, the director of business development in Russia of the CIS, Linxdatacenter comments.

Linxdatacenter

Linxdatacenter is the international service provider of DPC and telecommunications, with the main office in Amsterdam and offices in the territory of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe. Linxdatacenter task - to provide a complex of highly reliable telecommunication services and integrated solutions for ICT infrastructure of clients that allows clients to concentrate on core business. For this purpose the company built the cable network with redundant routes and a unique covering connecting regions of Western Europe, North America, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe. Based on hi-tech DPCs, Linxtelecom provides to clients services in placement of the equipment and broadband access in the Internet, guaranteeing reliability and high quality of services.

Now in the company more than 160 employees from 12 countries of the world work. For more information, please, visit our site www.linxdatacener.com.

KPMG in Russia and the CIS

KPMG is the international network of the firms providing auditor, tax and consulting services. At offices of KPMG in 146 countries of the world 140,000 employees work. Independent firms - members of KPMG network are included into KPMG International Cooperative association ("KPMG International") registered by the legislation of Switzerland. Each firm is impartial legal entity.

In Russia KPMG works twenty years. In recent years KPMG in Russia and the CIS is the most fast-growing division of the company in the world.

In Russia and the CIS countries more than 3,000 specialists work in our divisions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Alma-Ata, Astana, Bishkek, Donetsk, Lviv, Yerevan, Kiev and Tbilisi.