Dell Builds Backup Infrastructure for IBK, Strengthening Cyber Resilience

[Financial News] Dell Technologies has strengthened IBK’s data protection system against cyberattacks and disasters by building its backup infrastructure. It supports the rapid recovery of financial operations even after an attack by storing critical data separately from the operating environment.

Dell Technologies said on the 13th that IBK had adopted data protection and cyber resilience solutions for its new backup system at the Hanam Data Center.
As it moved its IT systems to the Hanam Data Center, IBK replaced its existing tape-based backup environment. The move was intended to reduce the management burden caused by damage, loss, and deterioration of physical media, and to establish a backup and recovery system capable of adapting to growing data volumes and changes in the work environment.
For the project, Dell supplied PowerProtect Data Domain DD9400 and DD9900, PowerProtect Cyber Recovery, and NetWorker. Using these products, it established a backup and disaster recovery (DR) system to protect IBK’s enterprise-wide data, including account, information, operations, services, and unit-level business systems.
The system was designed with a multireplication structure comprising three backup copies in addition to the original data. After local backups are made at the Hanam operations center, the data is replicated to a separate off-site center and a DR center.
The data replication process uses “air gap” technology, which isolates backup data by disconnecting network connections, and “retention lock” technology, which prevents unauthorized deletion or modification. This enables recovery using isolated backup data even if the operating environment is exposed to ransomware or hacking. It also provides protection against data damage caused by operational errors.
Racks protected against high-power electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) were installed at the off-site center. Shielding that blocks external electromagnetic waves and fire-resistant features that protect equipment from fire have also strengthened resilience against physical disasters.

Dell simplified IBK’s backup management system by supporting different database environments with a single solution. According to Dell, in the live operating environment, Data Domain’s deduplication and compression features achieved a data reduction ratio of approximately 44 to 1. The company said this reduced the burden of storage and data center space costs.
Before adoption, IBK compared backup performance and processing times with other solutions through a proof of concept (PoC). Dell supported the project as a whole, including data migration and verification and preparations for the data center move, and proposed a phased plan for data protection and data center modernization.
The Hanam Data Center, which began service in May last year, is a digital finance hub that has expanded traffic capacity to approximately three times or more than that of the previous center and has redundant power supply infrastructure. With this backup infrastructure project, IBK strengthened the data protection foundation needed for artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud transformation.
Yoo Sang-mo, president of Dell Technologies Korea, said, “For financial institutions, cyber resilience means more than simply having backups. They need to be able to recover to a trustworthy state even after a cyberattack or disaster.” He added, “IBK’s project is an exemplary case of strengthening cyber resilience by isolating and protecting critical data and using automated backup and recovery systems.”

[email protected] Yoon Hong-jip Reporter