Introduction
On September 11, 2001, the terrorist attack destroyed the World Trade Center in New York, which was the most highly concentrated financial area. This attack not only destroyed the twin towers, but also ruined the financial system. Banks located in the World Trade Center went through an unprecedented disaster. The company’s back-up facilities which were too close to the primary facilities were disrupted as the primary facilities. Single points of failure in perceived diverse routing resulted in failed back-up communications systems. Because of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there is significant increased focus on the disaster recovery plan. (Robert Bronner, 1997)
According to Robert Bronner, banks were among the earliest adopters of information technology in the business world. The widely use of information technology in the bank system forced a new industry – the disaster recovery industry. Disaster recovery plan is an important part of bank business continuity plan. It is a processes or set of procedures that help firms prepare for disruptive events. The goal of the plan is recover and protect a business IT facilities, such as the network, document management system, and core system, in the disruptive events. Those events include both natural disaster such as earthquake and man-made disasters such as power outage. It is impossible that a bank can always avoid disasters, so the disaster recovery plan plays an important role after a bank suffer a disaster. With a careful plan will effetely help the bank to minimize downtime and data loss to ensure some level of organizational stability and an orderly recovery after a disaster will prevail. The Automated Clearinghouse Association was formed by 7 Philadelphia-based banks in the mid-1970s for the sole purpose focus on how to manage bank’s data recovery when bank’s computer systems go down. This group started the disaster recovery industry in 1987 by