RBI is also concerned about two hour resumption time for payment systems

Two months back, I wrote a blog post on how the Basel Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures was reckless in insisting on a two hour recovery time even from severe cyber attacks.

I think that extending the business continuity resumption time target to a cyber attack is reckless and irresponsible because it ignores Principle 16 which requires an FMI to “safeguard its participants’ assets and minimise the risk of loss on and delay in access to these assets.” In a cyber attack, the primary focus should be on protecting participants’ assets by mitigating the risk of data loss and fraudulent transfer of assets. In the case of a serious cyber attack, this principle would argue for a more cautious approach which would resume operations only after ensuring that the risk of loss of participants’ assets has been dealt with. ... The risk is that payment and settlement systems in their haste to comply with the Basel mandates would ignore security threats that have not been fully neutralized and expose their participants’ assets to unnecessary risk. ... This issue is all the more important for countries like India whose enemies and rivals include some powerful nation states with proven cyber capabilities.

I am glad that last month, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) addressed this issue in its Financial Stability Report. Of course, as a regulator, the RBI uses far more polite words than a blogger like me, but it raises almost the same concerns (para 3.58):

One of the clauses 31 under PFMIs requires that an FMI operator’s business continuity plans must ‘be designed to ensure that critical information technology (IT) systems can resume operations within two hours following disruptive events’ and that there can be ‘complete settlement’ of transactions ‘by the end of the day of the disruption, even in the case of extreme circumstances’. However, a rush to comply with this requirement may compromise the quality and completeness of the analysis of causes and far-reaching effects of any disruption. Restoring all the critical elements of the system may not be practically feasible in the event of a large-scale ‘cyber attack’ of a serious nature on a country’s financial and other types of information network infrastructures. This may also be in conflict with Principle 16 of PFMIs which requires an FMI to safeguard the assets of its participants and minimise the risk of loss, as in the event of a cyber attack priority may need to be given to avoid loss, theft or fraudulent transfer of data related to financial assets and transactions.

Posted at 1:53 pm IST on Tue, 13 Jan 2015         permanent link

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