1. SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity
Mark Buysse , Patrick Lodder , Alaa AlRousan
African Regional Conference - May 2016
Mauritius

2. ? ? ? ? Something goes wrong!!! Sometimes … Alliance Access / Entry
Production system
Alliance Access / Entry
DR system DB DB ?
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link ? ?
Today I will talk about resiliency and how to improve the resiliency of your particular setup. Here we see a typical situation with a primary system and a back up system.
You can probably imagine the situation where one moment you are smoothly exchanging messages and the next moment suddenly nothing happens anymore.
The message flow is stopped, you have an outage.
By the time you have put your finger on the problem, some time has passed. If the problem is not easily solved, you probably don’t know how long it will take before you can use your Primary system again.
The clock is ticking though, yet you might be reluctant to start your Backup machine, because that means quite difficult connections need to be set up and reconciliations need to be done.
A decision needs to be made, because at this point you are stuck. The risk of missing that days’ cutoff becomes more and more real as time passes by.
Today, there are some easy ways to protect your SWIFT Infrastructure better against these kind of problems. I will cover 3 examples in this presentation. To get a better overview, let’s have a look at the agenda for the rest of this presentation.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

3. Best Practices of SWIFT infrastructure Setup
Agenda
Best Practices of SWIFT infrastructure Setup
Remote Application Host Adapter (RAHA)
Alliance Remote Gateway
Alliance Lifeline
Database Resilience
System Support Package (SSP)
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

4. Best Practices of SWIFT infrastructure Setup
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

5. SWIFT Infrastructure Overview
Business Applications
Middleware
Active/Standby
Alliance Lifeline
Built-in Resiliency
Database Recovery
Messaging Interface
For ex: Alliance Access
Local Redundancy
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link
Communication Software
HSM Clusters
HSMs
Alliance Connect Offering
SWIFTNet Connectivity
VPN Boxes
In a SWIFT infrastructure, the core elements that can be the cause of an outage are the SWIFTNet connectivity, the security devices (HSM), the communication interface (Gateway and SNL) and the messaging application (Alliance Entry or Access).
You will be looking for means to make them resilient, because all these components are equally crucial to your SWIFT infrastructure.
In the Resiliency Guide that you can find on swift.com, SWIFT provides an institution with recommendations for building an appropriate level of resilience into its global messaging services.
Also, your whole infrastructure can have various degrees of resiliency : from a single operating site to multi active
Many gradations of resilience can be implemented. The resiliency requirements can be the result of various variables. The following might come to mind: market best practice, official regulations, market infrastructure obligations and of course budget restrictions.
SWIFTNet
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

6. Single Site Setup
Single Operating Site
Back-Office
Alliance Access
SAG/ SNL
Alliance Connect
Bronze
Internet
I will start with a quick explanation of a typical Single Site Setup configuration. (Pointer) The back office is connected to the Alliance Access instance, which will use the Gateway and Alliance connect Bronze in this case to connect to SWIFTNet.
When you have an Alliance Access Licence, you will have 1 live, 1 test, but also 1 back up instance of Alliance Access. Similarly for Alliance Gateway. 1 live, 1 test and 1 back up instance. Depending on where the problem occurs, you have different options to restore your connection to SWIFT as the dotted lines indicate.
In case of failure within Access or Gateway, the back up instances will need to be activated manually.
SWIFTNet
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

7. Active/Standby Setup
Active Site
DR Site
Back-Office
Back-Office
Alliance Access
Alliance Access
HSM
HSM
SAG/ SNL
SAG/ SNL
Alliance Connect
Silver+ / Gold
Alliance Connect
Silver+ / Gold
This is an Active Standby setup, where a backup site is available in standby mode. So after the activation of the backup site, operations can be continue from the back office on the backup site or the back office of the Active site can be failed over. There are some limitations to that, but we won’t go too far into detail right now.
Also on the active site, the Gateway can be failed over automatically. We will get back to this later in the presentation.
Lease line
Internet
Lease line
Internet
SWIFTNet
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

8. Dual Active Setup
Active Site
Active Site
Back-Office
Back-Office
Alliance Access
Alliance Access
HSM
HSM
SAG/ SNL
SAG/ SNL
Alliance Connect
Silver / Gold
Alliance Connect
Silver / Gold
So here is the last typical setup we will cover. The Dual active setup. Both sites are active and can be used. Depending on the configuration the relevant path is chosen. Optionally the back office can be activated at either site. At all times there should be a connection to SWIFTNet available.
Lease line
Internet
Lease line
Internet
SWIFTNet
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

9. Business Continuity & Recovery Factors
Recovery Time Objective (RTO):
Acceptable amount of time to restore the function
Requirement example:
RTO = 0 in case of a site loss.
RTO = 4 hour in case of 2 sites loss
Recovery Point Objective (RPO):
Acceptable latency of data that will not be recovered
RPO = 0 (no data is lost) in case of a site loss.
RPO = 30 min in case of 2 sites loss
Continuity
Business
So, when you think about Resiliency, you first have to define what are your Business Continuity requirements. Of course these will be different for every institution.
You have to take into account the RTO (Recovery time objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) as Business Continuity requirements.
Simply put, this means how long should it take before I am back connected to SwiftNet and what latency do I require in terms of data recovery.
We have plotted the three typical SWIFTNet configurations on these scales to give you a graphical overview.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

10. SWIFT Infrastructure Setup Comparison
Single Site
Recovery Point Objective
Recovery Time Objective
Active / Standby Setup
Dual Active Setup
Here is a graph that shows in the horizontal axis an indication of the recovery time and on the vertical axis the recovery point (so how much data would need to be recovered).
With the Single Site set up, it will take time to activate the back up instances. As a result messages will be lost and retrieval will need to happen. The impact is clear, especially if the activation of the back up is taken longer then expected and is not being tested regularly.
The Active / Standby setup will allow you to recover faster and therefore there is also less messages that need to be retrieved. Once the active site would be down, the standby site will basically function as a single site. Therefore also having the characteristics as described before.
More resilient is the Dual active set up. Once one of the active site goes down, failover happens to the other active site. This is minimizing the recovery time and the amount of lost messages to basically none. With one active site down, the remaining active site becomes a single site with the resiliency it offers.
Most of the customers will have a similar typical set up.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

11. How to achieve higher Resiliency & Business Continuity
Connectivity Resiliency
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

12. Connectivity Resilience: Remote Host Adapter (RAHA) No RAHA Scenario
Legend: Primary route(s)
Cold Backup route
Production Site
DR Site / Local Backup system
Back office must failover to contingency Alliance Access
Back office application
Loss of in-flight transactions, retrieval costs and
reconciliation
Alliance Access / Entry
Production system
Alliance Access / Entry
Cold system DB DB
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link
To introduce how this setup can improve your connectivity Resilience, we start with a configuration without RAHA (Remote API Host Adapter), this is the setup in which typically both Alliance Entry or Access and Gateway run on the same hardware.
In case of a persistent problem with either the SWIFTNet connectivity, the HSM or Gateway and SNL software,
a failover must happen to the contingency Alliance Access system for your Backoffice application.
A failover in this setup has important consequences.
-the redirection of the connection with the back office is not always an easy process
-the messages which were being processed on the Alliance Entry or Access, must be considered lost and need to be retrieved. Retrieving messages costs money and therefore there is a direct financial impact.
-the manual reconciliation process is tedious and error prone
-Other financial impact is possible; if a payment is missed, overnight interest must be paid.
-all of this demands considerable human effort
Testing this scenario requests a lot of careful preparation.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

13. Connectivity Resilience: Remote Host Adapter (RAHA) Implementing RAHA
Legend: Primary route(s)
Active standby route
Production Site
DR Site / Local Backup system
Back office application
Automatic failover of LT for FIN, SnF InterAct and SnF FileAct to backup Gateway.
Without downtime and loss of in-flight messages.
Alliance Access / Entry
Production system
Alliance Access / Entry
Cold system DB DB
RAHA
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link
Alliance Gateway
SWIFTNet Link
RAHA
Here we have a look at the same set up in a single host environment, but now with RAHA licensed on the Gateway. With this set up, it is possible to failover your traffic automatically to an alternative Alliance Gateway. Using RAHA, all your FIN, SnF InterAct & SnF FileAct messaging flows will still go through the original Alliance Access at the production site, without any downtime. So there is no operational impact.
To give you and example: if your SWIFTNet FIN connection through your primary Alliance Gateway connection is lost, your FIN session is aborted and your Logical Terminal and FIN states become interrupted. Your FIN session will then try to resume on the predefined secondary connection.
You can define up to 4 backup Gateways on Access and up to 2 backup gateways on Entry.
The advantages of such Gateway failover are obvious:
There is no reconciliation effort required or financial impact, because the Prime messaging interface is still being used.
Contingency testing also becomes a lot easier. Your resiliency in terms of connectivity is significantly improved.
There is one thing I do need to mention and this has to do with the differences between Alliance Access and Alliance Entry. Store and Forward InterAct and FileAct messages on Access can be automatically failed over to the backup Gateway. This is not possible on Alliance Entry, here the failover will need to happen manually.
Summing up, RAHA is easy to implement and clearly improves the resiliency for major connectivity failure points. This includes SWIFTNet connectivity (so the lines, routers, and VPNs), but also HSM, Gateway or SNL software. Failover procedures become much easier and saver to test and you have successfully tackled many Single points of Failure.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

14. RAHA – Easy to Implement
New license key
Relicense Alliance Gateway
No change in hardware No software installation
RAHA license on Alliance Gateway
Configure Entry/Access
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

15. How to achieve higher Resiliency & Business Continuity
Cloud Connectivity
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

16. What is Alliance Remote Gateway?
Alliance Access or
Alliance Entry
HSMs
Alliance Gateway
Customer premises
Alliance Connect
Customer premises
Replace your Gateways, SNLs, HSMs
Customer premises
SWIFT
Back-office applications
Alliance Connect*
Alliance Remote Gateway
* All Alliance Connect versions are supported (Bronze / Silver / Silver+ / Gold)
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

17. Consider Alliance Remote Gateway if …
You want the benefits of Alliance Access or Entry at your premises without needing to operate Alliance Gateway, SWIFTNet Link and HSMs You want to reduce technical complexity, effort and infrastructure for SWIFT messaging, while keeping control and application integration at your side You want to reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO)
Alliance Remote Gateway is designed for customers with up to five BIC-8 destinations, up to 20 concurrent users, and low-to-medium message volumes (up to Alliance Gateway band 4)
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

18. Introducing Alliance Lifeline
Alliance Lifeline keeps you connected to SWIFT no matter what happens
Alliance Lifeline keeps you connected to SWIFT no matter what happens
e.g. if you have a branch overseas that connects to SWIFT through your SWIFT infrastructure, what happens if the leased line fails between you and SWIFT. How can they ensure the continuity of their SWIFT operations without missing their local RTGS cut off time?
To prevent this, SWIFT now offers you a cloud-based resilience solution, always available and without any heavy footprint implementation
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

19. Cost-effective insurance Improve resilience
Alliance Lifeline: Connect to the SWIFT Cloud if your infrastructure is not available
Primary site
Backup site
Last resort solution?
Resilience
traditional setup
Primary site
Backup site
SWIFT Cloud
Resilience setup
with Lifeline
Cost-effective insurance
Improve resilience
Reduce operational & business risk
All SWIFT
message types and files
This is your on traditional resilient set up : you have a primary site to connect to SWIFT, and a back up site. But what if your back up site is not available, or you it has not been used in such a long time you cannot even start its system ?
With the Alliance Lifeline, you keep your primary and back up site, but you have an insurance that you can always connect to SWIFT.
Alliance Lifeline is a cost-effective service that enables you to keep on using SWIFT if your standard connection becomes unavailable
Managed and operated by SWIFT, Alliance Lifeline may be suitable to increase resilience, or if you lack an alternative connection
Alliance Lifeline keeps you connected to SWIFT no matter what happens. In today’s fast-paced business environment, minutes can mean millions when it comes to missed deadlines. For you it is a simple, cost-effective way to increase resilience and reduce operational and business risk.
Easy to activate and use, Alliance Lifeline lets you exchange all SWIFT message types and files using an Alliance Access-like interface until your SWIFT connection becomes operational again. . It offers automated and manual message entry and supports basic message reconciliation.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

20. Alliance Lifeline : Optimize your infrastructure
Your connection
HSM
Interface
At your premises
Primary / backup / DR infrastructure
Browsers @
Alliance Lifeline
Alliance Lifeline
And this is how it works.
In a scenario where your SWIFT infrastructure fails and you can no longer continue your operations either through your primary, backup or DR site.
Then you can activate Alliance Lifeline and resume your SWIFT operation. You can connect to Lifeline using a secure USB token, via a normal Internet connectivity or optionally via your existing Alliance Connect.
Alliance Lifeline is a ‘cold standby’ service based on Alliance Lite2. It includes a user interface, SWIFT connection, and related services. The user interface is always available, but your connection to SWIFT is not active under normal conditions. If your primary SWIFT connection becomes unavailable, you simply ask SWIFT to activate your Alliance Lifeline connection
There is no learning curve for your operational staff. The GUI on Alliance Lifeline is exactly the same as the Webplatform messaging GUI they are familiar with.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

21. How to achieve higher Resiliency & Business Continuity
Database Resiliency
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

22. Recovering from any failure: Database Recovery
Alliance Access DB contains:
Live and archived messages
Configuration data
Event log
Alliance Access
Alliance Access DB backups contains:
Configuration data
NO messages
Embedded Oracle Database
Data files
Redo Logs
DB Backups
Alliance Access Outage (Power, disk Corruption,…)
Traffic
No DB corruption
In case of partial DB corruption
This is your Live system.
If you don’t have DB recovery, no easy solution exists to recover from a SAA system failure or DB corruption.
The Alliance Access database backup, produced by using the backup and restore tool, contains only configuration data, no messages.
If you don’t have DB recovery, Operations have to be resumed from this database backup.
Message archive and Events archive files can be restored however, all live messages and completed messages that are not yet archived are lost. The only possible to get it back to your system is using retrieval messages facility from SWIFTNet FIN, which will be a very costly and time consuming exercise for message reconciliation at your backend.
Database corruption or system failure can happen anytime during any operation day.
If DB is restored due to system failure or DB corruption, the message files will be empty.
If the DB is corrupted partially, you would have lost some message from the moment you Alliance Access failed.
If the DB is fully corrupted, that means that the redo logs embedded in the oracle DB will be corrupted, thus all your traffic will be lost.
DB recovery is the built-in feature that allows you to quickly resume message exchange, but requires you to manage the messages potentially lost, to retrieve message, and you will have to go through Complex recovery procedures during the incident.
In case of Redo logs corruption
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

23. Alliance Access Database Recovery : Improving your Resiliency
- Native feature
- Based on Industry proven technology
- Recover on another host
- Single command to recover
Alliance Access
Embedded Oracle Database
Database Recovery
Data files
Redo Logs
Mirror Disk
Backup disk
A single command
saa_dbrecovery
DB Backups
Alliance Access Failure
Traffic
In case of DB corruption
Using DB recovery
Up to the last
committed state(*)
Now, with the DB recovery option on SAA, you can recover the Database include all SAA configuration, operators, RMA, Live Messages, Events, Archive files, etc. up to the last moment of the system failure.
This can be achieved by a single command from the DB recovery feature, from you Access back up system or the same Access system still in function.
After successful recovery, you will have the exact identical Access database in your backup server, up to the last valid transaction. You get the benefits of a real-time backup, full data recovery, no messages loss, no message retrieval is required anymore , it complements your existing mirroring or cluster configuration.
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

24. Reducing RTO / RPO SWIFT is here to help you improve your Resiliency
Single Site
Alliance Lifeline
Recovery Point Objective
Recovery Time Objective
Active / Standby Setup
Dual Active Setup
Alliance Access
Database Recovery
SWIFT is here to help you improve your Resiliency
Thanks to Alliance Lifeline & Alliance DBR, you can significantly reduce your TCO & TPO
Whether your configuration is that of a single site , or of an active standby
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

25. How to achieve higher Resiliency & Business Continuity
Proactive Support Services
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

26. System Support Package: Reach to the maximum resiliency with the proactive support
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity

27. Make use of all Alliance possibilities to improve resilience
Alliance Connect for line resilience
RAHA for failover to backup Gateway
Alliance Lifeline for extra disaster site resilience
Database Recovery on Alliance Access for database protection and easier recovery procedures
Tested failover procedures are key!
Ask for Assistance when needed.
Summary
Learn
Prepare
Test
Ask For Assistance
In summary, we strongly advise you to investigate how the possibilities provided by the Alliance products can increase the resiliency of your SWIFT Infrastructure.
Alliance Connect brings you a first level of resilience in the access to the SWIFT backbone
The RA Host Adapter on Gateway allows you to implement automatic failover of the FIN message flow. It can be implemented without any change to your hardware and without any software installation.
It also prepares you to implement a DMZ, if you would prefer to install Alliance Gateway on a separate server
Lifeline allows to have full peace of mind to ensure SWIFT operational continuity.
On Alliance Access, the Database Recovery feature provides protection against database unavailability and live message loss. If you have already recovery procedures in place, they can be simplified.
Don’t hesitate to contact us to check at which level of Resilience you are today and at which one you want to be tomorrow
SWIFT Business Continuity & Connectivity