Case Study: Berkshire Bank

Amidst the chaos that engulfed dust-covered Manhattan that fateful Tuesday morning, The Berkshire Bank's 5 Broadway location was vacated at 10:00 a.m. Thankfully, no one at the bank was injured and there was no tangible damage to the premises or equipment. At that point, the bank still had power and connectivity, and management was hoping to send a small crew in the following day to run the computers and necessary processing.

When World Trade Center 7 fell, however, authorities made a decision to disconnect all the power in downtown Manhattan early that evening. For The Berkshire Bank, this meant that the day's transactions, all of which had been captured on the AS/400, were unavailable. An entire day of input had been lost. The bank's upper management reconvened on Wednesday morning and declared a disaster.

"I recommended to management that the Centurion solution would not only be more cost effective, but that the synergy between the software side and the recovery side would be advantageous."
          Dan Kimchi
          Vice President of Technology and Operations
          The Berkshire Bank

Recovery Begins
Along with the rest of the world, Centurion had been closely following the events in New York City and was therefore expecting a call from The Berkshire Bank. The wheels for recovery were set in motion once a bank representative arrived at the Danbury hot site with critical backup tapes consisting of a complete system backup and all the data files that reflected Monday night's update.

Centurion's association with Jack Henry immediately paid off when it was discovered that the wrong system backup - that of an older version of 20/20 - had been delivered. The bank had recently updated the core processing system, and the earlier generation did not match the bank's version of its databases. Centurion quickly corrected the problem, loading its own copy of the updated 20/20 software.

While tapes were being loaded at Centurion, Kimchi had made his way back to the Lower Manhattan branch by bicycle. It soon became clear that power would not be restored anytime soon. But Kimchi was able to retrieve documents and passwords that would assist in recovery procedures.

Files and programs were restored at the Danbury recovery site that afternoon. Kimchi worked with Centurion's communications specialist to quickly reprogram the routers to create necessary connectivity between the bank's major branches and the recovery center. It so happened that Danbury's router had been taken to Centurion's Angola, Indiana hot site for reprogramming the day before. The Berkshire Bank branches were therefore connected through the Jack Henry network in Angola.

"Without branch communication," notes Kimchi, "things would have been much more difficult. We would not, for example, have had balance information." Connectivity allowed the Danbury Centurion center to run the bank's subsequent night's processing and updates on the system. Reports were produced and critical printouts sent to New York.

In the meantime, Kimchi worked to coordinate such functions as the receipt of transmissions for inclearing through the backup Fed communication line at the bank's Madison Avenue branch. Everything had to be rerouted. The Fed sent both inclearings and ACH transactions to Kimchi via his personal email account. He, in turn, downloaded the information and sent it to Danbury. Centurion personnel once again demonstrated their technical expertise when they were called upon to reformat these files for processing. "Our previous vendor would not have been able to accomplish that," states Kimchi.

"The level of cooperation, support and enthusiasm provided by Centurion more than met my expectations and contributed to a speedy and successful recovery." - Dan Kimchi

Overcoming Issues
Because The Berkshire Bank had not had the opportunity to test with Centurion prior to the 9/11 disaster, some problems did occur during recovery. Centurion, however, rose to the occasion, doing all in its power to work around the issues and achieve desired results.

The Vertex Teller™ system, for instance, was completely down, requiring tellers to issue manual receipts. Three to five employees then traveled to Danbury each day to enter transactions. Jack Henry has since given the bank a program called "Store and Forward". This enables tellers to continue to book balances to the passbooks and do all their transactions should the Vertex system go down. Once the system is restored, all of the information is automatically uploaded to the AS/400. Ensuring connectivity of Vertex Teller is a priority on the testing agenda with Centurion later this year.

Focus will also be given to the IVR™ (interactive voice response) and Internet banking systems, as they were also down during the entire three days that The Berkshire Bank was operating from Danbury. Kimchi shares that there is a recommendation on the table for the bank to switch to Jack Henry's NetTeller Online Banking™ system to circumvent any future connectivity problems.

Success Declared
The bottom line, in Kimchi's estimation, is that Centurion helped the bank to recover. "By Friday, we were caught up and we resumed processing at our own operations center on Monday morning." In contrast, he points out, "Some banks were down for those three days and then took about two weeks to recover. Other banks never recover from a situation like this."

That is simply unacceptable for The Berkshire Bank. The New York institution is known to customers as "The Bank that Puts Your Interest First". And it has always done just that - providing superior products and unmatched personalized service.

The events of 9/11 proved to customers that even in a major disaster, they will be taken care of. "Customers were very impressed that they could walk into the bank and obtain balances and any information they needed," says Kimchi. It's just that kind of service that has earned The Berkshire Bank its reputation as a leader in the communities it serves.

Preparing for the Future
In safeguarding operations for the future, The Berkshire Bank is proud of its association with another industry leader, Centurion Disaster Recovery. "The level of cooperation, support and enthusiasm provided by Centurion more than met my expectations and contributed to a speedy and successful recovery," Kimchi relates.

He also realizes that, "You can never be 100% prepared for disaster." That's why steps have been taken to enhance preparation as much as possible. The bank now daily backs up its Local Area Network and performs a more elaborate backup on weekends. More backup tapes are kept in the off-site storage facility. Even Kimchi's Palm Pilot now carries bank information critical for recovery. Finally, The Berkshire Bank is in the process of rewriting its entire business recovery plan and is considering utilizing Centurion resources to assist in that regard.

Mr. Kimchi can't say enough about his experience with the Jack Henry group. "The Centurion staff was very professional, very organized, and very enthusiastic," he asserts. "When it comes to disaster recovery, they know what they're doing."

By Marsha Cansler