Financial services to bolster sector resilience in event of disruption

The 9/11 attacks; the July train bombings in London; and Hurricane Katrina all pushed to the fore the issue of business continuity (some call it “business resilience”). Now, an important organization with a very long name — the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security (FSSCC) “has formed a Research and Development Committee to identify areas in which research initiatives may help meet the needs and priorities of critical infrastructure protection within the sector. The new Committee will guide future R&D efforts to bolster the financial services sector’s resilience in the event terrorism, cyber attacks, or natural disasters which disrupt the normal business of financial services. “We want to provide the industry, the researchers and academics, the technologists and the entrepreneurs with a better understanding of the needs of our industry sector, sharing insight into the opportunities and requirements for improving financial infrastructure protection as the members of the sector see them,” says Donald Donahue, chairman of the FSSCC and Sector Coordinator for Banking and Finance. “By coordinating support for R&D across our member network, we believe we can help to identify the most promising opportunities for research, and also help enlist financial institutions that might be interested in participating in this type of research, providing test data and deploying results for use across the industry.”

“FSSCC has done a terrific job at organizing the financial sector’s efforts to improve communication and collaboration on business continuity,” said D. Scott Parsons, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Compliance Policy for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. “They offer a model of success for other industry sectors.”

-read more in this FSSCC news release