The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued revised guidelines on business continuity management (BCM) for financial institutions (FIs), in a bid to reduce service disruptions from IT outages, pandemic outbreaks, cyber-attacks and physical threats.
According to MAS, the revisions take into account learnings from the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and increased digitalisation in the financial sector.
The BCM guidelines were first issued back in June 2003, amid the Sars pandemic. The guidelines had been revised continuously since then.
Under the revised guidelines listed by the MAS, the financial institutions should adopt a service-centric approach through timely recovery of critical business services facing customers.
They need to identify end-to-end dependencies that support critical business services, and address any gaps that could hinder the effective recovery of such services.
They are to also enhance threat monitoring and environmental scanning, and conduct regular audits, tests, and industry exercises.
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“Against the backdrop of an increasingly volatile and complex environment, the new guidelines will help financial institutions to take an agile and holistic approach in sustaining their critical business services when faced with threats and risk of disruption,” says Vincent Loy, assistant managing director (technology) over at MAS.
MAS says the revised guidelines took into account feedback from two rounds of public consultation.
