As part of their Business Continuity program, CU*Answers performs regular failover and recovery tests for critical core-processing components. During the week of August 13, 2018, recovery teams completed an exercise to restore the Electronic Check Processing (ECP) server environment and perform critical business operations from an alternate facility for the purpose of validating procedures and ensuring the capabilities of the corporate business continuity strategy.

“More than simply acknowledging the ability to restore the required applications and databases, these exercises are designed to test the ability to ‘replay’ the events of the business day in an isolated environment, parallel to production,” said Jim Lawrence, vice president of Business Continuity. “The results must then match for the test to be considered successful.”

Critical operational tasks performed during the test include:

• Acquiring appropriate files from the Federal Reserve Board (FRB)
• Performing check processing repairs and rejects
• Creating and sending transmission files representing both online and in-house client credit unions
• Downloading and processing return files from the core
• Creating return files for submission to the FRB

Upon completion of the recovery test, a full gap analysis report is provided to all in-network credit unions for review as part of their vendor due diligence program. More information about the Business Continuity services available from CU*Answers can be found on their web site.