VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of websites
were reportedly attacked recently should go back to normal operation after
several hours thanks to the back-up systems. However, analysts have warned that
in Vietnam,
the proportion of institutions and enterprises which have disaster recovery
centers remains modest.

Enterprises urged to set up back-up
information systems

At the
Security Information Day held in Hanoi in November 2010, Dang Manh Pho,
Director of the Technology Division under the Bank for Investment and
Development of Vietnam (BIDV), urged banks and institutions to build up and
maintain the back-up information technology (IT) systems in order to prevent
and fix breakdowns.

Pho said
that enterprises and institutions need to build IT back-up systems right now
before it is too late, and that it is necessary to consider the back-up systems
as an effective tool in order to ensure continuous business operations.

“Back-up IT
systems should be seen as one of the three most important factors for
information security of enterprises, especially financial and banking
enterprises,” Pho said.

According
to Nguyen Trong Nghia, Deputy General Director of the Global Data Service Joint
Stock Company GDS, when setting up systems and machines serving production and
business, enterprises and institutions always have solutions to provide for
possible contingencies. However, the solutions can only help fix incidents
caused by the inner problems. Meanwhile, an IT disaster recovery center will
allow prevention of incidents at a higher level that covers both inner problems
and outer forces, including fire, earthquake and hackers.

According
to Ngo Tuan Anh, Director of Bkis Telecom, the back-up IT system always runs
parallel to the main information system and it can replace the main system when
necessary in order to ensure the continuous operation of the information
system. Besides, back-up systems can also serve for training, technology
transfer or can be used for testing new technology solutions.

According
to Phan Thai Dung, representative from the Information Technology Agency under
the State Bank of Vietnam, under the current regulations set by the central
bank, the back-up IT center of commercial banks must be located at least 30
kilometers from the main systems and
they must have the ability to become operational to replace the main systems
after four hours.

Many
enterprises decided to set up back-up systems far from the main systems, but
still in the same country in order to minimize risks and save money. Meanwhile,
many big corporations set up international recovery systems in order to ensure
the highest possible protection level.

How to spend money on the systems?

There are
no official statistics on investments in disaster recovery centers in Vietnam.
However, according to GDS, only some enterprises and agencies, which have high
proportions of e-transactions, have back-up systems, such as the Ministry of
Finance, the State Bank of Vietnam,
commercial banks or stock exchanges.

The
Ministry of Finance was one of the first ministries and branches in Vietnam which
set up a disaster recovery center in 2005 which has been operating since 2008.

As for
BIDV, the commercial banks began thinking of such a center in 2008. According
to Pho, BIDV is not the first commercial bank which set up a disaster recovery
center, but it is the bank which follows a methodical and reasonable investment
plan.

Nghia from
GDS believes that the demand for setting up disaster recovery centers will
increase in the future, when people have to endure more natural catastrophes,
high-tech crimes and terrorism

Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon