Risk of information loss at Promsvyazbank is minimized thanks to a new data center

PSB is a universal bank offering a full range of banking services to individuals and legal entities. Among its clients are more than 80 000 Russian enterprises, over 370 000 depositors and borrowers, and more than a million cardholders. The bank's regional network covers more than 240 sales outlets in major Russian cities, a branch in Cyprus, and representative offices in India, China and Ukraine.

In 2010, Technoserv completed a project to build a remote backup telecommunications center (RTC) for PSB, intended to ensure continuity for the client and the bank’s infrastructure and communication services in case of the technical failure of equipment, natural and technological disasters or major accidents at the telecom operators. The RTC’s IT infrastructure is based on the reliable and high-performance Cisco 7600 and 7200 series, Cisco ASA firewalls 5500 and Checkpoint VPN-1/Firewall-1. The safe and smooth operation of the RTC’s IT infrastructure provides an integrated support system that includes a subsystem air conditioning, security, and uninterruptible power supply, and the rapid collection, processing and transmission of information about the status of all hardware system by an automated monitoring system.

The RTC is located at a considerable distance from PSB’s main telecommunications center and all communications between the bank are distributed and replicated. To ensure communication between the telecommunication centers, high-speed long-haul optical channels and equipment are used, connected with the Cisco Catalyst 6500.

The presence of two - main and backup - telecentres ensures the availability of IT infrastructure and availability of the multi-bank network, even in case of failure, at one of the sites that meet current stringent requirements for financial institutions, including the recommendations of the Bank of Russia on business continuity as well as requirements for operational risk set out in Basel II and the Letter of the Central Bank of 24 May 2005 N 76-T "On the organization of operational risk management in credit institutions."

The project to create a remote backup telecommunications center followed the development of a 15-year partnership between Technoserv and PSB on several fronts.