Business Continuity Preparedness

Bank ABC has established a Business Continuity Management (BCM) Programme designed to minimize service disruption and the potential impact on the Bank, our customers and our staff.  This includes a BCM Policy that is approved by our Board together with written Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans and procedures that are subject to period independent review. 

Although the specific details of our BCM arrangements are confidential for security reasons, Bank ABC maintains Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) that address risk scenarios and events of varying scope including, but not exclusively, loss of services or infrastructure, denial of access, cyber-attack and regional crises. 

Bank ABC’s BCPs are focused on maintaining critical processes, including treasury, capital & liquidity and payment services, providing customers with uninterrupted access to their funds and maintaining effective communications with our customers, staff and other stakeholders. We aim to recover critical processes and systems within 4 hours of the activation of our BCPs. 

Bank ABC maintains separate primary and backup data centers. Both data centers have uninterrupted power supplies (UPS) and generators as protection from drops, surges, or loss of voltage from the power utility.

The primary data center in Bahrain is staffed twenty-four hours a day, six days a week and is equipped with redundancy and contingency features. The backup data center is located in the UK in a facility owned and operated by Bank ABC in London. 

Data for all mission critical systems is replicated to our backup data center. Data for all business systems is backed up on tape on a daily basis and the backups are stored at an alternative site located approximately 20 km from our main premises. Periodic backup, failover and recovery testing is also performed.

Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) are in place that define the responsibilities, actions and procedures to recover production systems, communications and network environments.

Critical business processes, associated Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives, critical records and recovery teams are documented in departmental Business Impact Assessments (BIAs). 

In the event that we cannot continue operations from our main premises in Bahrain, Bank ABC maintains a remote fully equipped business local continuity center that uses a separate electricity and telecommunications grid.

In addition, Bank ABC also maintains business continuity facilities in two overseas locations.  The transfer of critical business activities to these facilities is contemplated only in the event that it is not possible for us to execute operational activities in Bahrain from our local business continuity center. 

Our BCPs and DRPs are reviewed and tested at least annually.  Any areas for improvement that are identified are tracked to ensure appropriate resolution and our plans and infrastructure updated as appropriate. Capacity and resource requirements are also reviewed periodically.

All Bank ABC staff must be aware of their responsibilities in relation to BCM and undertake mandatory awareness training on an annual basis. Bank ABC staff with active recovery roles are required to regularly participate in periodic business continuity tests.​​