Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery for Financial Institutions in Singapore
arrangements. We connect business continuity plans to the systems, backups, connectivity, suppliers and support processes that determine whether critical operations can continue during disruption.
What does MAS TRM mean for business continuity and disaster recovery?
For a regulated financial institution, business continuity and disaster recovery are not simply backup activities. The organisation needs to understand critical systems, define recovery requirements, maintain suitable recovery arrangements, test whether those arrangements work and retain evidence showing that technology services can be restored within its approved recovery objectives
Business Continuity Built Around Critical Financial Services
A recovery plan is only useful when it reflects the services the organisation must keep operating. We begin by
identifying critical business services, the applications and data they depend on, the people who operate them and the external providers that support them.
- Critical business service and process mapping
- Application, data and infrastructure dependencies
- Internet, telecoms and office connectivity dependencies
- Cloud, SaaS, custodian, administrator and technology-provider dependencies
- Key-person and support escalation dependencies
- Workarounds where full recovery is not immediately possible
Defined Recovery Objectives
Recovery targets should be agreed with the business rather than assumed by the technology team. Global ITN helps translate operational priorities into practical recovery objectives for systems and data.
- Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) for critical systems and services
- Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for business and operational data
- Service-specific recovery priorities
- Dependencies that could prevent the target being achieved
- Escalation paths when a recovery target is at risk
Recovery targets should reflect the firm’s actual risk tolerance, contractual obligations and regulatory responsibilities. Global ITN can support the technology implementation and testing; the regulated firm remains responsible for
approving its business and regulatory requirements.
Backup, Recovery and Failover Design
- Backup coverage for servers, cloud workloads, Microsoft 365 and critical data
- Immutable or retention-locked backup options where appropriate
- Separation of production and recovery environments
- Network, firewall and internet resilience
- Alternative access for remote and displaced teams
- Documented restoration procedures
- Recovery access controls and privileged-account protection
- Capacity and licensing checks for recovery environments
Supporting MAS Business Continuity Expectations
MAS business continuity expectations require financial institutions to maintain arrangements proportionate to their critical services, dependencies and risk profile. Global ITN supports the technology implementation: recovery architecture, backup, connectivity, access, runbooks, testing and technical evidence. Global ITN does not certify compliance or replace the institution’s risk, compliance or management responsibilities.
MAS TRM compliance support
Why Global ITN
Global ITN combines Singapore-based delivery with practical infrastructure, cloud, networking, cybersecurity and managed-support capability.
Who We Support
Operational Resilience Beyond Technology
Technical recovery is only one part of continuity. A financial institution also needs workable arrangements for staff, premises, communications and third-party failures.
- Remote-working and alternate-location readiness
- Access to critical applications during an office disruption
- Secure communications for incident coordination
- Contact and escalation information that remains available during an outage
- Third-party outage and concentration-risk scenarios
- Manual procedures for critical services where technology is unavailable
Recovery Testing and Evidence
Untested recovery assumptions create false confidence. We help firms move from high-level plans to structured exercises that demonstrate whether systems, access and support processes work as expected.
- Technical restoration tests
- Failover and connectivity tests
- Tabletop exercises for realistic disruption scenarios
- Evidence capture, issue logging and remediation tracking
- Lessons-learned reviews and plan updates
- Management and audit-ready test summaries
What Global ITN Can Deliver
- Current-state continuity and disaster-recovery assessment
- Critical-system and dependency inventory
- Backup and recovery design
- Network and connectivity resilience improvements
- Cloud and Microsoft 365 recovery planning
- Recovery runbooks and escalation procedures
- Test planning and technical execution
- Remediation support after exercises or incidents
- Ongoing managed monitoring and support
Disruption Scenarios We Can Test
- Ransomware or destructive malware affecting production systems and backups
- Compromised administrative accounts or loss of identity services
- Microsoft 365, cloud workload or SaaS service disruption
- Primary internet, firewall or network failure
- Office inaccessibility and remote-working activation
- Critical supplier, custodian, administrator or technology-provider outage
- Accidental deletion, data corruption or failed system change
What You Receive
- Current-state continuity and disaster-recovery assessment
- Critical-system and dependency inventory
- RTO/RPO and recovery-priority register
- Recovery architecture and control recommendations
- Recovery runbooks and escalation procedures
- Test plan, evidence and results summary
- Gap, issue and remediation register
- Management-ready summary of findings and priorities
How We Start
- Discovery: identify critical services, systems, sites and providers.
- Gap review: compare current recovery capability with business requirements.
- Prioritised plan: separate urgent resilience risks from longer-term improvements.
- Implementation: configure backups, connectivity, access and recovery procedures.
- Testing and evidence: demonstrate that arrangements work and record the results.
- Ongoing support: maintain, monitor and retest the environment as it changes.
Related Financial Services
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery?
Business continuity covers how critical services continue during disruption. Disaster recovery focuses more specifically on restoring technology, data and infrastructure. The two should operate as one coordinated capability.
Can you test our existing disaster-recovery plan?
Yes. We can review the plan, validate technical assumptions, help design restoration or failover tests, capture evidence and identify remediation actions.
Do we need a separate recovery environment?
Not in every case. The appropriate design depends on the criticality of the service, acceptable outage duration, data loss tolerance, architecture and budget. We assess the options against agreed recovery requirements.
Can you help with cloud and Microsoft 365 recovery?
Yes. We can review identity, data, configuration and backup dependencies across cloud workloads and Microsoft 365, then design practical recovery arrangements.
Does Global ITN certify MAS compliance?
No. Global ITN implements and operates technology controls that support the firm’s resilience obligations. Regulatory interpretation and compliance ownership remain with the regulated institution and its advisers.
Can you provide ongoing support after the initial project?
Yes. The recovery environment can be incorporated into an ongoing managed-support model covering monitoring, maintenance, documentation and periodic testing.
MAS TRM Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Questions
Does MAS TRM require financial institutions to test disaster recovery?
Financial institutions should test their technology recovery arrangements so they can demonstrate that critical systems and services can be restored as planned. Testing should validate the recovery process rather than simply confirm that backups exist, with results, issues, corrective actions and subsequent retesting documented as evidence.
What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?
What are RTO and RPO?
Should every system have the same RTO and RPO?
What evidence should be retained after a disaster-recovery test?
Can an outsourced IT provider perform disaster-recovery testing?
Yes. An outsourced IT provider can operate or support recovery testing, including backup restoration, infrastructure recovery, failover exercises and evidence collection. The financial institution should still define the required recovery objectives, approve the arrangements, review the results and maintain oversight of any deficiencies or remediation actions.
How Global ITN Supports MAS TRM Recovery Readiness
Global ITN supports Singapore financial institutions with backup architecture, disaster-recovery planning, recovery testing, Microsoft 365 and Azure resilience, network recovery and remediation of technical recovery gaps. The objective is to move from having backups on paper to having documented evidence that critical technology can actually be recovered.
Business continuity is strongest when the recovery plan, systems, suppliers and support team have been tested together. Talk to Global ITN about reviewing or improving your current arrangements.
