Today, Nacha - The Electronic Payments Association announced the launch of an Emergency Contact Database for Financial Institutions.
The Emergency Contact Database serves as a tool to help facilitate communication and collaboration between financial institutions during emergencies, such as natural disasters, data breaches, and denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that could impact the day-to-day operations of their institutions and the financial services industry as a whole.
"Today, financial institutions face heightened threats and risks associated with both natural and manmade disasters," said Chrystina M. Giorgio, Senior Vice President and Director of Deposit Operations and Digital Services at Sandy Spring Bank, and former member of NACHA's Risk Management Advisory Group. "These risks and threats have the potential to significantly impact business operations of financial institutions. By having a tool in the Emergency Contact Database that assembles the key risk management contacts at financial institutions, we can quickly and easily share information and work together to mitigate risks and coordinate appropriate threat response activities."
NACHA invites participation in the new Emergency Contact Database, as participation is open to all financial institutions. Financial institutions are invited to search the database for risk management contacts at financial institutions across the country and populate the database with contact information for appropriate risk management personnel at their own institutions.
"We invite every financial institution in the U.S. to participate in and utilize the Emergency Contact Database," said Janet O. Estep, president and CEO of NACHA. "This new tool provides us with an opportunity to learn, share, collaborate, and advance the way in which financial institutions communicate about and respond to emergencies."
The Emergency Contact Database for Financial Institutions is a project of NACHA's Risk Management Advisory Group (RMAG). RMAG advises the NACHA Board of Directors on risk strategy. RMAG monitors Network developments to assess risk management needs, develops sound business practices on risk management issues, initiates risk-related rules proposals, and employs new risk management tools and services.