Where are our bank details kept?

JustAnotherSaver

With what's going on in the world at the mo it made me wonder this. 

Purely a what if question and in any event, if we did come under the big rockets money is going to be a worthless thing anyway if none of us are left but my wondering still remains.... 

So all our details are kept somewhere. Big bank servers I guess. I imagine these are huge supercomputers in big buildings located some place. Or perhaps it's something to do with satellite technology, I've honestly no idea. 

So say we were to come under heavy attack and the buildings the data is kept in gets blasted to smitherines, how does that billionaire prove he's got more cash than the beggar on the street (assuming we'd be in a position to rebuild afterwards)? 

Like I said, it's not a serious question. Just a what if wondering. 

Section62

JustAnotherSaver said:

With what's going on in the world at the mo it made me wonder this. 

Purely a what if question and in any event, if we did come under the big rockets money is going to be a worthless thing anyway if none of us are left but my wondering still remains.... 

So all our details are kept somewhere. Big bank servers I guess. I imagine these are huge supercomputers in big buildings located some place. Or perhaps it's something to do with satellite technology, I've honestly no idea. 

So say we were to come under heavy attack and the buildings the data is kept in gets blasted to smitherines, how does that billionaire prove he's got more cash than the beggar on the street (assuming we'd be in a position to rebuild afterwards)? 

Like I said, it's not a serious question. Just a what if wondering. 

Given the frequency of failures, I have a feeling some banks are using one of these....

(No disrespect for the Spectrum intended, it was a great computer in its time)

In reality they should be holding their data in multiple locations, so an attack on one building ought not to leave them without the ability to work out whose money is whose.

Thrugelmir

Every organisation should have a disaster recovery plan. Technology has always failed at some time. 

Sandtree

JustAnotherSaver said:

So all our details are kept somewhere. Big bank servers I guess. I imagine these are huge supercomputers in big buildings located some place. Or perhaps it's something to do with satellite technology, I've honestly no idea. 

So say we were to come under heavy attack and the buildings the data is kept in gets blasted to smitherines, how does that billionaire prove he's got more cash than the beggar on the street (assuming we'd be in a position to rebuild afterwards)? 

Not supercomputers, its clusters of good computers as these are much cheaper and sufficiently efficient than building a supercomputer plus creates redundancy that's easier to switch out a failed unit. 

Ultimately they a bunch of computers in a building somewhere, may be the banks building or it may be an offsite data centre from the likes of Microsoft's Azure or Amazon's AWS. The data doesn't however sit in just one building but multiple buildings as there are multiple backups in different locations to deal with much more mundane issues like a power cut or fire.

cx6

Thought everyone knew - all details about us, including bank account details, are held by facebook.

Prism

The big old school banks tend to store the most important data on IBM Power Systems (originally known as AS400s). These tend to still go on premises across two or more data centers but also might go into IBMs cloud. 

More modern banks, without the legacy stuff, are a bit more flexible and might use on premises data centers connected to one of the big cloud providers - Microsoft, Amazon, Google or IBM.

ColdIron

That'll be IBM AS/400 and they are almost as old as that speccy above. I doubt they play much part in anything these days

Prism

ColdIron said:

That'll be IBM AS/400 and they are almost as old as that speccy above. I doubt they play much part in anything these days

They are still around, at least in a modern form, in most of the big banks. The trouble is that so much of it is complex and legacy in IBM still focus on enterprise resiliency.

400ixl

Some banks still use mainframes but many do not these days. Not that it really matters as it is just compute and storage at the end of the day.

There are regulations in place for financial organisations about how resilient the data needs to be and what the minimum physical distance must be between the data centres. You also have offline backups of key data which again is typically stored in a third location. This is as a minimum.

I wouldn't so much be worried about data loss due to bombs / missiles outside of a nuclear strike (where your banking details may be the last of your worries) but more about cyber warfare. There is far more likely hood of disruption to financial systems that way than through physical destruction.

ColdIron

Prism said:

ColdIron said:

That'll be IBM AS/400 and they are almost as old as that speccy above. I doubt they play much part in anything these days

They are still around, at least in a modern form, in most of the big banks. The trouble is that so much of it is complex and legacy in IBM still focus on enterprise resiliency.

The last one I saw was in the server room of a large bank in 2008. It was so old that if you turned the screen off you could still see the welcome message where the phosphor/coating had been 'burned' away

JamesPeter

And there was I thinking every banking transaction was entered, in copperplate writing using a quill pen, into heavy leather-bound ledgers!

Credits in black ink, debits in red ink - with not a sign of correcting fluid anywhere!

All of my deposits being held in the strongroom under the floor of my local branch of the National Whatever Bank!

Banking was perhaps simpler back then!