Dear Editor,

I refer to the letter from Mr Tan Huang Meng (“Do we have backup if bank breaches occur?”, Straits Times, 24 July) asking if banks in Singapore have adequate measures to deal with situations when customer information is deleted or corrupted.

Let me assure Mr Tan that banks in Singapore have robust processes to back-up their data as part of their business continuity plans. They regularly test and validate their business continuity to ensure that all critical banking services can be recovered swiftly in a disruption, including when customer information is deleted or corrupted.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) requires all banks operating in Singapore to recover their critical systems within four hours following any disruption. MAS also expects banks to have a comprehensive data backup strategy for the storage of critical information. 

MAS takes seriously the security, resilience and availability of our banking infrastructure and works closely with the industry to ensure that it remains so. 

Jerome Lee (Mr)
Director (Corporate Communications)
Monetary Authority of Singapore