Client Story

Regional Bank Improves Resilience Against Rising Cyberthreats

Empowering River City Bank to strengthen business continuity, regulatory compliance and resiliency.

Founded by Jon Kelly in Sacramento, Calif., River City Bank started out as a small community bank in 1972. By 2009, the institution had grown into 10 area branches with a presence in the Bay Area and Southern California. Today, it has assets of nearly US$3.8 billion, making River City Bank the largest independent, locally owned and managed bank in the Sacramento region. As River City remains a commercially focused regional bank with a target market of $5-100 million, it looks ahead to becoming the premier commercial bank in the state of California.

River City Bank began its relationship with FIS® in 2016, when it converted to FIS® IBS core. River City Bank then needed to meet data protection regulatory requirements as well as safeguard against rising cybercrime and ransomware threats seen across the banking and financial services sector.

They turned to FIS Data Restore, a Sheltered Harbor® solution. FIS, the first service provider officially certified to provide the Sheltered Harbor data vaulting solution, was the natural choice for River City Bank, alongside their synergies with IBS core and other FIS solutions.

Data Restore helped River City Bank streamline the registration process for membership with Sheltered Harbor, a globally recognized set of standards and best practices, and gave them the tools and resources to protect their data and implement stronger security protocols. Data Restore also actively secures their critical deposit account and customer information and maintains online and offline infrastructure that allows secured recovery of data should an attack occur. Backed by Data Restore, River City Bank can provide assurance that customer account information remains guarded by encryption and resistant to any cyberthreat.

Here's how FIS Data Restore works:

  1. FIS extracts a bank’s end customer deposit account data out of the core at the end of each day.
  2. FIS validates, compresses and encrypts the data onto a tape in a Sheltered Harbor standardized format.
  3. The tape is transported, stored and locked in a physical, offline data vault.
  4. If a data destruction event occurs, the tape is retrieved and FIS can decrypt, validate and recover the files.
  5. The files are then sent to the client for internal recovery.

Once the Data Restore implementation began with FIS managed risk services (MRS) team, River City Bank knew they made the right choice. The FIS team provided full implementation support, making the entire data vaulting and certification process simple and streamlined.

According to River City Bank SVP director of Operations, Matt Huber, they found the entire FIS Data Restore implementation process to be a valuable and user-friendly addition to their financial institution.

“FIS Data Restore solution, along with the support of Sheltered Harbor, has allowed us to enable a data vault, become certified and strengthen our business continuity and resiliency plans,” Matt says. “As one of the first banks to implement this solution and achieve certification, we have found FIS managed risk services group to be a great partner. They are a knowledgeable and responsive team.”

River City Bank currently enjoys streamlined, ongoing support, post-implementation and at present, over 90% of the bank’s systems and apps are powered by FIS. It has been a successful eight-year relationship and they look forward to new opportunities and achievements in years to come.

At a Glance

OBJECTIVE
Strengthen business continuity and resiliency plans and be prepared with an additional layer of insurance against cyber criminals and ransomware threats.
FIS SOLUTIONS

FIS DATA RESTORE

RESULTS

River City Bank’s experience working with the FIS Managed Risk Services (MRS) team has been extremely positive. They found the entire FIS Data Restore implementation process to be painless and user friendly. The time and effort spent by the bank's team is minimal; FIS has streamlined the entire process by collating all Sheltered Harbor requirements and making them available in a centralized document, handling everything end-to-end, including sending out reminders for annual recertification, and providing straightforward, streamlined pricing and support models.

Impact

Implementing FIS Data Restore has allowed River City Bank to satisfy various data protection regulatory requirements and provided the bank’s senior management with peace of mind, knowing that they have a clear path to survival in the event of a catastrophic data breach and/or ransomware event. Securely vaulting their critical data with FIS Data Restore has allowed the bank to maintain and instill confidence in their customer base and the public.

On top of that, ongoing service support from the FIS MRS team means the bank only spends minimal time and effort on the management of the solution.

Ensure that critical data sets are protected, and critical services can continue even when systems and back-ups are down

Instill confidence in their customers and the public that they have a clear path to survival if a catastrophic data breach and/or ransomware event occurs

FIS Data Restore solution, along with the support of Sheltered Harbor, has allowed us to enable a data vault, become certified and strengthen our business continuity and resiliency plans. As one of the first banks to implement this solution and achieve certification, we have found FIS managed risk services group to be a great partner; they are a knowledgeable and responsive team.”
- Matt Huber, SVP Director of Operations, River City Bank