Raiffeisen Informatik Cuts Mainframe Cyber Recovery from an Estimated Seven Days to Two Hours with Hitachi Vantara

Summary:

• Seven days to two hours: Cyber resiliency architecture enables rapid recovery even after total storage loss across both data center sites
• Two-hour recovery point: Immutable snapshots protect consistent application states while limiting potential data loss to the snapshot interval
• Built for worst-case resilience: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform architecture supports rigorous recovery testing aligned with the resilience objectives of the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)

Raiffeisen Informatik GmbH & Co KG, an Austria large banking IT services providers, has implemented a cyber resiliency architecture for its mainframe environment in partnership with Hitachi Vantara, the data storage, infrastructure and hybrid cloud management subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd.Powered by Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) and based on immutable snapshots, the solution reduces recovery time in the worst-case scenario – the total loss of all storage systems across both data center sites – from an estimated seven days to between one and two hours. The architecture also limits potential data loss to two hours. The deployment illustrates how financial institutions can strengthen operational and cyber resilience by protecting critical data and validating recovery procedures vs. severe disruption scenarios. 

The Vienna-based provider’s mainframe environment processes approximately one billion transactions per month for more than 1.25 million end customers. Raiffeisen Informatik operates the IT infrastructure for central institutions of the Raiffeisen Banking Group, including Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien, Raiffeisenlandesbank Burgenland, Raiffeisen Landesbank Vorarlberg, and the UNIQA insurance group. Before the project, Raiffeisen Informatik operated two production storage systems across two data center sites, supported by daily FlashCopies and batch backups written to a virtual tape library. The architecture met the four-hour recovery time objectives for standard failure scenarios.

The challenge emerged when Raiffeisen Informatik modeled the most severe scenario: an attacker destroying all storage systems across both data centers simultaneously. In that situation, a complete recovery from classical backup media was estimated to take approximately seven days. The potential impact of that kind of downtime is severe; a recent report found companies lose an average $300 million a year to unplanned outages, plus fines if they do not stay compliant with the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which requires business continuity.

In a 24/7 banking transaction environment, there is no straightforward point in time at which a consistent backup of the entire landscape can be created. Recovery would therefore require data to be reconstructed from individual tables and combined with forward-recovery procedures. For an interconnected core banking environment serving multiple financial institutions, such a recovery process would be highly complex and difficult to execute within the required timeframe.

Immutable Recovery with Hitachi Mainframe Cyber Resiliency Solution
To address this challenge, Raiffeisen Informatik deployed the Hitachi Mainframe Cyber Resiliency Solution, combining Hitachi Universal Replicator for continuous data replication with Hitachi ShadowImage for Mainframe for immutable snapshot creation.

Two NVMe-based Hitachi VSP arrays were installed as dedicated snapshot targets, complementing the existing Hitachi VSP systems at both mainframe sites. All systems are connected via dark fiber. The critical element of the architecture is the separation, or air gap, between production storage and the snapshot targets. The snapshot storage cannot be addressed by the mainframe production environment. As a result, an attacker with administrative access cannot see, modify or delete protected snapshots.

During their retention period, the snapshots are physically separated from the production environment and logically write-protected. New snapshots are created every two hours, providing consistent recovery points for the entire application environment. Importantly, recovery can be initiated directly from the snapshot without first having to copy all data back to the production storage infrastructure.

“Without Hitachi Vantara’s support, the solution simply wouldn’t have worked,” said Werner Georg Mayer, MD, Raiffeisen Informatik. “What matters is that from a snapshot, we can bring up the entire application environment with a consistent data state in one to two hours. A traditional file- or database-level restore of the full application landscape would take days – and achieving a consistent state across all systems that way is barely achievable.”

Testing Resilience Under Extreme Conditions
The architecture gives Raiffeisen Informatik a recovery capability that goes beyond conventional disaster recovery scenarios. The company tests its recovery procedures annually in an isolated logical partition on the mainframe, completely segregated from the production network. This approach allows Raiffeisen Informatik to test recovery under conditions designed to reflect the most severe disruption scenarios, rather than relying solely on theoretical recovery procedures.

“Financial institutions need to know that their critical systems can be restored when conventional recovery assumptions fail,” said Octavian Tanase, CPO, Hitachi Vantara. “Raiffeisen Informatik has taken a rigorous approach to cyber resilience by designing and testing for a total-loss scenario and testing recovery procedures under realistic conditions. Reducing an estimated seven-day recovery to as little as two hours is significant, but the value goes beyond faster recovery. It gives mainframe leaders confidence that mission-critical banking services can be restored when it matters most.”

The resulting architecture delivers a validated recovery path from severe cyber disruption scenarios – well within Raiffeisen Informatik’s contractual four-hour SLA under the tested total-loss scenario – while the two-hour snapshot interval defines the potential recovery point, limiting data loss exposure.

From Mainframe Resilience to Next-Generation Storage
The project was completed in approximately four months from order to production and was implemented jointly by Raiffeisen Informatik’s in-house team and Hitachi Vantara Professional Services. Building on this work, Raiffeisen Informatik has also signed a new agreement to add VSP One Block High End to its mainframe storage environment, helping prepare its infrastructure for future performance, resilience and scalability requirements.

“We have a clear view of what our mainframe environment needs to support the business going forward,” Mayer said. “Our storage infrastructure needs to keep pace with growing performance demands while giving us the flexibility to scale. VSP One Block High End gives us that foundation for the next phase of our mainframe strategy.”