HAGERSTOWN, Md. — About 18 months after it was formed, Ongoing Operations, LLC has passed its first live test, a disaster drill for Northwest Federal Credit Union.
NWFCU was one of the seven credit unions that got together to form the business-continuity CUSO, which has since added three more investor credit unions and seven more clients.
The first live test was held on Sept. 6 at Ongoing Operations' facility in Hagerstown, a daylong exercise that revealed minor IT issues, all resolved on site, the CUSO says.
Recommended For You
"NWFCU's disaster test demonstrates the advantages of pre-staging equipment and resources. Because of this advanced preparedness, they were able to be up and running within two hours of starting the test," says Kirk Drake, Ongoing Operations' president and CEO.
Ongoing Operations says it provides three primary services as a turnkey solution for credit unions to continue operations after a natural disaster or terrorist attack: consulting to help create and maintain business continuity or disaster recovery programs, along with infrastructure and key partnerships needed to support such programs.
NWFCU says the daylong test involved executing a wide range of transactions and member calls.
"The scope of this test moved beyond strictly information technology," says Bill Cook, the credit union's strategic planning officer. "We made it all encompassing in terms of day-to-day operations. By bringing staff members to the site to use our back-up systems, we were able to test the whole environment including hardware, software, office location and configuration."
Juri Valdov, president and CEO of $1.5 billion NWFCU, says the live test "provided valuable information for improving our business recovery processes," while Drake says it also demonstrated the CUSO's ability to "help credit unions establish robust business continuity programs and to help the credit union industry achieve what members expect."
In addition to NWFCU, Ongoing Operations' founding credit unions are HEW FCU, NIH FCU, Synergy One FCU, Transportation FCU and Agriculture FCU. –[email protected]
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
