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 | Standard Bank again affected by EDS system problems |  |  |
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26 January 2003
Standard Bank credit card merchants and customers were affected to varying degrees for more than two hours on Saturday when its processing contractor, EDS, was struck by an Internet virus.
EDS, a United States based company, says a "denial of service" attack worm slowed traffic across the Internet network around the world. It says this type of attack does not attack or damage data, but slows or stops service by flooding the network with volume.
While Standard Bank card merchants were unable to obtain electronic authorisation for transactions from about 10:10am to 1pm on Saturday and sporadically throughout the afternoon, emergency measures were put in place to grant manual authorisations during this period. All systems are now operating normally. "We regret this inconvenience to customers and merchants, especially seeing that this incident comes so soon after unprecedented volumes affected pre-Christmas shoppers, " says Craig Bond, Director, Standard Bank, Card Services.
Ray Holtshousen, Director, Standard Bank, Group IT, said that while EDS and many other organisations across the globe were seriously affected by this virus attack on Saturday, no other Standard Bank systems were affected. "Our security protocols served us well," he said.
Standard Bank and EDS announced last year that the processing services contracted out to EDS five years ago were to be terminated and re-absorbed by the bank. Bond says this process is proceeding satisfactorily and all staff and most software applications have already been transitioned back to the bank.
The information systems and networks affected by this virus are planned to be transitioned back to Standard Bank over the coming months.
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