Projects: Financial-services industry

Banca Popolare di Sondrio (BPS) has become the first bank in Europe to safeguard customers’ data and deposits using an innovative disaster recovery solution from T-Systems. The Italian institution is therefore at the forefront of business-continuity technology.

Founded in 1871, BPS employs around 2,200 staff at 247 branches throughout Italy. With over 157,000 stockholders and almost as many customers, the bank has equity totaling almost one billion euros.

Giampiero Raschetti, ICT manager at BPS, is no stranger to continuity: his office windows look out onto a stunning panorama of mountain peaks, some of them 4,000 meters high, known in Lombardy as the heart of the Alps. What’s more, Raschetti is only too aware of the IT-related perils faced by many organizations in financial services. These include ineffective monitoring systems, poor database design, unforeseen emergencies such as power cuts and hacker attacks, and lack of data encryption and cutting-edge solutions for IT event management. To address these and other potential hazards, BPS recently decided to seek state-of-the-art protection. The bank opted for advanced data replication from T-Systems. As Raschetti explains, the project presented some thorny challenges: “Our server farm handles services and content from the Internet and our intranet. What’s more, the technology we use is constantly evolving – and the number of online services we offer is always rising. As a matter of fact, just determining the scope of our disaster-recovery requirements was far from easy. So that’s why we defined our highest priority services and developed a solution on that basis.”

T-Systems had the answer: an innovative data-security architecture based on an EMC infrastructure and Cisco Systems technology, and tailored to Banca Popolare di Sondrio’s IT services. This now provides a powerful shield for the bank’s Internet and intranet services. In the event of a disaster, the solution not only recovers data and replaces unusable infrastructure and hardware, it also ensures process continuity. IT experts believe the architecture, which was specially designed for BPS’s online banking and intranet, sets new standards in terms of flexibility and reliability. It leverages best-of-breed solutions to deliver comprehensive, integrated functionality for remote system management, storage area network, backup, monitoring, problem/incident management, and change management.

If the bank’s systems come under attack, all data is rapidly restored. The solution ensures there are no interruptions to the highly sensitive and critical processes within the bank’s virtual ICT environment. What’s more, it provides effective protection against phishing, unauthorized access, and abuse of services. In addition to cutting costs in the long term, the new solution saves employees valuable time, as they no longer have to weed out spam emails or tackle viruses. And, they enjoy secure networks and Internet connections, even when they are away from the office – increasing staff motivation and productivity.

“This innovative, dynamic solution has surpassed our expectations,” says Raschetti. “We are now ideally placed to achieve tangible results. Data convergence and replication are faster than forecast. This means we can comply with the rules laid down by Banca d’Italia, the Italian central bank. And most importantly, our customers’ data is safe.”