Uptime Institute, an organization that assesses the resilience of data centers, has introduced a new tool designed to further minimize the risk of data center downtime for banks and other financial organizations.
The product is called SCIRA-FSI (Standardized, Comprehensive Infrastructure Risk Assessment for Financial Sector Institutions / Standardized, Comprehensive Infrastructure Risk Assessment for Financial Sector Institutions)
SCIRA-FSI was developed to address the challenges facing the financial sector
The tool was developed to identify and minimize the risks of data center infrastructure failures, as well as mitigate the consequences of failures involving mission-critical IT equipment. Financial organizations can use SCIRA-FSI to maximize the reliability of their own data centers, third-party data centers, and cloud computing platforms.
In response to recent high-profile outages and increasingly complex hybrid IT architectures deployed by financial sector institutions (FSIs), regulators are introducing operational resilience requirements to encourage more proactive and effective risk management methods.
Recognizing growing regulatory requirements and the adoption of more complex hybrid IT infrastructures across the financial sector institution community, Uptime Institute introduced the SCIRA-FSI assessment to help financial organizations evaluate the operational resilience of their critical infrastructure in owned data centers or cloud data centers. Uptime Institute brought together more than twenty leading financial organizations from around the world to form the program's development partners and create a standardized approach to help the financial sector better assess and mitigate the consequences of failures.
SCIRA-FSI is based on UI's analysis of more than twenty data centers and generally accepted financial sector standards, including internal assessment protocols shared by the program's development partners and common FSI infrastructure risks compiled from the UI Abnormal Incident Report database, which contains more than eight thousand data points on the root causes of failures.
SCIRA-FSI assessment components
SCIRA-FSI examines the underlying physical infrastructure of a data center, including management and operational controls, as well as the development, operation, and oversight of business services at an enterprise-wide level, in order to minimize and mitigate the risks of both physical and operational failures.
Site Characteristics
Data center site location risks;
Building plan characteristics;
Building structural characteristics.
Topology and Infrastructure
Engineering infrastructure conditions;
Power supply systems;
Air cooling systems;
Additional systems;
Security systems;
Telecommunications systems.
Site Operations Management
Personnel and organizational structure;
Human resources training and development;
Training system and program management;
Health and safety.
Oversight Functions
Regulatory compliance;
Compliance with rules and regulations;
Standards and certification;
Sustainability (Sustainability);
Energy efficiency.
Assessment Process Overview
During each site visit, Uptime Institute consultants use the SCIRA-FSI assessment protocol to examine every element within the scope of operations and determine whether a potential risk to site resilience is absent, present but mitigated, or present and unmitigated. The impact of each risk is considered and assessed based on its scale and the severity of the consequences of failure.
Upon completion of the assessment, clients receive a detailed report on current physical and operational risks, a set of actionable recommendations for addressing those risks, and a summary of the risks and recommendations identified through the assessment.
This approach not only helps financial organizations proactively prevent outage incidents, but also serves as the documentation required to confirm that a comprehensive risk management assessment has been conducted for the infrastructure supporting mission-critical business services.
List of global financial regulators in accordance with which certification is conducted
As noted earlier, SCIRA-FSI is the result of a productive collaboration between Uptime Institute and more than twenty financial regulators worldwide. Unfortunately, this list does not include Russian or Kazakh financial regulators. However, it does include several well-known regulators whose extensive experience is relied upon by many financial institutions in Kazakhstan. Here are just some of them: