The regulator states that banks’ critical systems cannot be out of action for more than four hours within any 12-month period, and that these systems must be supported by a back-up data centre and tested periodically in order to ensure their recovery when their primary data centres fail.
DBS Bank and Citibank’s services in Singapore are backed by an Equinix data centre, as per the regulator’s guidance.
On 14 October, both banks activated their back-up data centres after their primary centre failed to perform normally. However, the pair were unable to recover their systems within the mandated timeframe.
