Move has been triggered by SSP outage

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Biba is planning to hire an IT expert to test how robust the business disaster recovery plans of the top six software houses are.

The six companies that will be looked at include SSP, Applied Systems, CDL, Acturis, Open GI and Transactor.

The move has been triggered by the outage suffered by SSP on 26 August that led to some 300 brokers unable to access parts or all of their systems.

Biba chief executive Steve White said brokers did not have the dedicated resources to be able to conduct a robust analysis of software house systems.

White said: “We are putting together a project plan. We will then go and find suitable experts to go round the six major software houses to test their voracity and security of data and the robustness of their disaster recovery plan.

“Brokers are expected to undertake due diligence when they outsource their IT but a lot of brokers would not have the wherewithal to do the sort of jobs we could do on their behalf.”

The work will start this year.

White said he hoped to have a completed report by the first quarter of next year, which will then be sent out to members.

Biba is also planning to hold the meeting between members, affected by the SSP outage and the software house, on 10 October.

Brokers are expected to find out what SSP has done to rectify the problems and how it will prevent it from happening again.