Mumbai: Ten banks and finance companies reported minor disruptions because of the Microsoft outage; however, most customer-facing banking operations were largely unaffected.
According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a large-scale outage in Microsoft services has impacted IT systems globally, leading to disruptions in various sectors. RBI had assessed the impact of this outage on its regulated entities. The RBI noted that the critical systems of most banks are not cloud-based, and only a few banks use the CrowdStrike tool.
“Our assessment shows that only ten banks and NBFCs experienced minor disruptions, which have either been resolved or are being resolved,” stated the RBI. “Overall, the Indian financial sector within the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage.”
SBI chairman Dinesh Khara said that the systems of the country’s largest bank were not affected by the outage. Bankers said that customer-facing services were most hit as core banking systems were unaffected.
“Our ATM networks were not affected. ATMs that run on windows are not connected to the Microsoft operating system but to an Unix platform. It is a client-server technology and therefore less dependent on MS systems’ said Mani Mamallan chairman and MD EPS (Electronic Payments and Services).
In response to the incident, the Reserve Bank has issued an advisory to its regulated entities, urging them to take necessary steps to remain alert and ensure operational resilience and continuity.
