MAS Queries OCBC on Outage
Singapore's financial overseer is demanding a reckoning from OCBC Bank over a four-hour disruption to banking services over the weekend.
After OCBC's service disruption on Saturday, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, says it wants the local lender to do a deep dive on the outage. The disruption, which occurred intermittently from 8:45 p.m. and worsened at 8:53 p.m., hit all banking channels including ATMs, credit card transactions, and online banking services.
«We have instructed OCBC to identify and address the root causes of the disruption, and submit a thorough investigation report,» said a MAS spokesman, who was quoted in «Straits Times» (behind paywall).
MAS said it will closely monitor OCBC's rectification measures following the service outage, and take suitable supervisory actions if necessary.
Software Failure
OCBC Chief Executive Samuel Tsien issued an apology to bank customers and explained that it was a software failure that led to the huge disruption last Saturday night, according to a press statement.
«A software failure in the backup unit for the core banking system resulted in the customer transaction data not being successfully transferred,» said Tsien in a statement on Tuesday, after identifying the root cause of the disruption.
«This caused the storage in the core banking system to reach its maximum capacity and to stop accepting new transaction data,» he added.
Human Oversight
However, it was due to human oversight that the software failure signal was not picked up by staff. «As a result, the core banking system was not able to function properly, which affected our ATM network, online banking channels, NETS [payments] and card services,» Tsien explained.
The bank said that it ensured all customer and transaction data was protected as it restarted the system during the restoration of services.
Regular Testing Required
The glitch prompted a swift response from the regulator following complaints from users across social media sites. Customers ranted about difficulties in cash withdrawals and accessing their accounts online.
The regulator said critical IT systems must be tested regularly to ensure that they can resume operations within four hours following any disruption. Local banks must have a maximum unscheduled downtime of no more than four hours across a 12-month period.
