VIENNA, Va. - Tens of thousands of Navy FCU members were unable to access their accounts for most of a day last Tuesday after violent thunderstorms knocked out power to the area surrounding the credit union giant’s headquarters in northern Virginia.
The power outages not only shut down the credit union’s main processor, but also telephone service to its worldwide branch network and to its call centers, preventing members from making phone transactions or using the popular Navy Fed Online Internet banking system.
“So it was kind of a double whammy,” said Jennifer Sadler, spokesman for the $36-million credit union.
The storms knocked down trees and shut down electricity provided to hundreds of thousands of businesses and residences by Dominion Power.
When the power outage occurred the credit union’s IBM Series z mainframe automatically shut down, while the back-up system’s four 1,000 kilowatt generators were activated.
Though power to the main system was restored within an hour, it took several hours for credit union staff to be able to verify the integrity of member accounts, preventing access to the accounts into the next morning, according to the credit union’s disaster recovery plan.
In the meantime, core processing tasks were transferred to the credit union’s back-up data center in nearby Winchester, Va., according to Sadler.
The power outage, however, also knocked out local phone service, affecting communications with Navy Fed’s Winchester and Pensacola, Fla., call centers.
“The branch offices could conduct transactions if the member came in,” said Sadler. Members were also able to use their credit cards and ATMs
“You do what you always plan to do for your back-up plan, then Mother Nature takes over,” said Sadler.
It took several additional hours to get the systems back online as staff reviewed the integrity of members’ data. All systems were repaired by the start of business, the day after the outage. “To power up all our systems and transfer to our data center does take time,” she said.
Member deposits and debits were posted on time overnight, as usual, and all accounts were safe and secure, she added.(c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
