The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), an association of leading financial institutions, technology vendors and government agencies that conducts industry research and works to foster common technology standards, has joined the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security (FSSCC).
FSSCC, a network of financial services industry associations and trade groups that works closely with the U.S. Department of Treasury, financial regulators and other government agencies, coordinates the private sector's preparation and response for events that could disrupt the normal business of financial services, such as terrorism, natural disasters or cyber attacks. Membership in FSSCC has grown almost 25% in the past year, and the 32 financial trade associations and private firms that belong to FSSCC collectively represent the interests of thousands of financial services organizations.
"Two of FSSCC's key strategic objectives this year are to implement a structured and coordinated approach to testing business resilience, and to identify and test the resilience of critical interdependencies between financial services and other sectors," said Donald F. Donahue, Sector Coordinator and Chairman of the FSSCC. "FSTC's research on industry interdependencies and technology recovery programs align closely with these efforts, and we welcome their contributions."
"One current FSTC project is developing a maturity model to help financial institutions measure their resilience against a common industry standard. This will let them better target and justify resilience investments, communicate with regulators, and generally evaluate and monitor their overall organizational resilience," said Zachary Tumin, Executive Director, FSTC. "We believe FSTC is a very good fit with FSSCC's mission and objectives - to strengthen and protect the resilience of the financial services infrastructure - and we look forward to being an active and contributing member of the Council."