Business Continuity Plan
Article 13 of Act No. 240/2000 Coll. on Crisis Management and on the Amendment of Certain Acts, as amended, lays down the CNB’s obligations in preparing for crisis situations, in particular the obligation to prepare a business continuity plan for the area of monetary policy and the banking sector and to assist the ministries in preparing their business continuity plans.
Under the aforementioned Act, the CNB has drawn up the Business Continuity Plan aimed at preparing the CNB to deal with emergencies that might disrupt or damage its integrity and destabilise its key activities in the Czech financial market area. The implementing documentation for the Business Continuity Plan includes specific procedures for dealing with particular emergencies. This documentation includes, among other things, contingency plans for information systems.
The SKD’s Contingency Plan stipulates procedures for dealing with particular contingencies in the SKD information system. Key emphasis is placed on the possibility of restoring the system at the backup facility, which is located at a sufficiently remote location and is not subject to the same sets of threats as the primary party. Thanks to its technical solutions and real-time availability, the backup facility offers the same performance, capacity and functionality as the primary party.
The SKD Contingency Plan is tested periodically in the real environment. All users are involved in these tests. The plan is revised where necessary based on the experience gained during the testing.
The CNB, as a participant of the European System of Central Banks considers the business continuity in payment and securities settlement systems to be very important. It cooperates with the other central banks in sharing information in this area. As part of terminology unification, a glossary of major business continuity terms has been developed, providing a list of definitions for the terms covering this issue.
Based on the international Recommendations for Securities Settlement Systems and the international Assessment methodology for “Recommendations for Securities Settlement Systems” set out by the Bank for International Settlement, an assessment of operational reliability regarding business continuity in the SKD system has been made at the CNB. The assessment result ranks the SKD system in the highest category Observed.