The bank’s primary data centre will be housed in the new Corporate Office in Thimphu which will be completed next month
In preparation to move the date centre of Bank of Bhutan Limited (BoBL) from Phuentsholing to Thimphu by this month, the employees of the bank over the last week (including the holidays) worked to test their standby systems by conducting a disaster recovery drill.
The primary goal of the drill was to test the robustness of the bank’s standby systems, according to BoB officials.
This was done in preparation of the move of the bank’s primary data centre from Phuentsholing to Thimphu on completion of the new Corporate Office next month.
The disaster recovery drill, BoB officials said, is also a part of their Business Continuity Plan (BCP).
The bank’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Pema Nadik said, “In the unlikely case of a disaster occurring that affects our data centre, the BCP is activated and operations continued from the secondary standby (DR) site.”
“This DR site needs to be tested from time-to-time to ensure it will function when needed and the recent exercise also fulfilled this requirement of the bank,” he added.
Effective DR plan involves backing up of all business data continuously, and by doing this, a company can be assured that in the wake of a disaster, data will still be accessible with minimum or no data loss, that will ultimately reduce disaster downtime.
CEO Pema Nadik said though the DR plan may not be able to completely eliminate downtime, it should serve to ensure that mission-critical functions are maintained, including the protection of sensitive customer information.
During the DR drill, BoB encountered some issues causing service disruption (ATMs and mBoB) from time to time, but the bank maintained that clients were well informed of the inconveniences through the various media channels, including the bank’s official social media sites.
Chencho Dema from Thimphu
