Power failure at UK data centre disrupts NZ insurance brokers for weeks

What happened

On 26 August 2016 a power failure at a United Kingdom data centre knocked out access to systems used by the insurance technology company SSP. The outage affected brokers and underwriters in the UK and New Zealand. Coverage in UK insurance media suggested that more than 40 per cent of brokers there had suffered disruption. In New Zealand, about 20 brokers were affected. One New Zealand broker with 12 staff reported that most staff were unable to work and that repeated assurances of a fix the next day had not been met.

Online access was restored late on a Wednesday, almost three weeks after the failure, but around eight years of older files remained inaccessible at the time of reporting. SSP said it deeply regretted the occurrence and had worked to achieve resolution.

Contributing factors

The source reports a power failure or power problem at the data centre. It does not state the cause of the power failure, the equipment involved, or whether backup power operated as intended. A customer said in hindsight that hosting arrangements and backup systems needed more due diligence, but the source does not establish why the outage lasted weeks.

Lessons learned

1. Operators relying on third-party data centres should verify the power resilience and backup power arrangements of the facility, not assume them.
2. Critical policy and transaction data should be held in a second location or with a secondary host so that a single facility outage does not halt business.
3. Hosting contracts should set recovery time commitments and communication duties for prolonged outages, and businesses should plan for lapsed renewals and client notification during an outage.

More lessons on outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

stuff.co.nz