News of a six-year, £24 million investment in Oracle e-business technology by Barclays Bank has been overshadowed by reports that the UK bank was forced to shut down its Internet banking operation after a security flaw led to customers gaining access to other people's accounts.
With over one million online customers, Barclays proclaims itself the fifth-largest Internet bank in the world. On Monday, the bank was forced to suspend operations after being contacted by customers who had mistakenly been given details of other people's accounts. Barclays says the problem, blamed on a software upgrade, affected fewer than 10 of the 85,000 customers who logged on to check their accounts that morning.
The security breach has taken the shine off Barclays six-year £24 million agreement with Oracle for e-business software services. The Oracle deal follows an announcement in March that Barclays had signed a five year contract with BT for the provision and service of an Internet Protocol (IP) based network.
The bank intends to e-enable its core systems and processes ensuring services such as Internet banking are ‘plugged in’ to a central hub rather than needing to be maintained as stand alone businesses. Barclays says it will spend £325 million on developing its e-capabilities during 2000.
David Weymouth, Barclays chief information officer, says: “Our aim is to e-enable Barclays and ensure that our customers – however they choose to bank with us - receive the same consistently high level of service.”
The Oracle technology will be used to improve the scalability of Barclays' online banking operation, and for internal and customer-based e-procurement projects. As well as being the main technology provider to Barclays B2B.com, the bank's new Internet business portal, Oracle technology will underpin a ‘marketplace’ application whereby users of the portal will be able to buy and sell goods to each other or by auction.