System failures highlight need for IT resilience

Two major software failures have caused embarrassment and significant financial loss to leading financial institutions this year. Alison Ebbage looks at the lessons to be learned from the RBS and Knight Capital problems

Stephen Hester RBS
Stephen Hester, RBS chief executive

In June 2012 millions of customer accounts at RBS and its subsidiaries NatWest and Ulster Bank became inaccessible after the bank lost the ability to process payments. An upgrade to the bank's batch processing system caused an overnight failure, triggering the problem. The bank's inability to revert its system to its pre-upgrade state compounded matters. In August US market-maker Knight Capital lost $440 million in 40 minutes due to the installation of trading software that then sent incorrect

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