SBI to bring ATMs under BS7799 certification

The State Bank of India (SBI) is planning to extend the BS7799 certification that it received for its data centre in Mumbai and disaster recovery centre in Chennai to its ATMs.

This apart, it will be bringing its international offices in California and Frankfurt under the core banking solution (CBS) network by the end of this month.

Speaking at a national conference on 'Information systems security and audit', R N Ramanathan, deputy managing director (information technology), SBI said, "Our data centre and disaster recovery centre recently received the BS7799 certification. We are planning to bring our ATMs and CBS under the same certification."

BS7799 is the British standard for information security management, providing a comprehensive set of controls for best practices in information security.

"While our New York office is already under the CBS network we will be bringing our offices in California and Frankfurt under the same network by the end of this month," Ramanathan said. In India, more than 6,500 branches of the bank are under the CBS network.

Meanwhile, T S Bhattacharya, managing director of SBI, said that today business was not possible without IT.

"The purpose of IT is to deliver efficient services and SBI has been in the forefront of technology. We have one of the largest ATM networks in the world and we are probably the largest issuer of debit cards in the country as well," he added.