Signal Financial Federal Credit Union rebounds in record time with Veeam during the CrowdStrike outage

Friday, July 19, 2024 began like any other day. Nico Stein, Vice President of IT at Signal Financial Federal Credit Union, said goodbye to his family, got into his car and headed to work.

“The weekend was approaching, so I was thinking about my plans as I drove, but then I noticed so many people were on their phones, and they looked stunned,” Stein said. “When I arrived at work and realized what had happened, I guessed they worked in IT.”

Dubbed the largest IT outage in history, the CrowdStrike software update impacted organizations worldwide including major financial institutions like Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and TD Bank. While most rebounded in half a day, Signal Financial Federal Credit Union rebounded in half that time.

“There’s only one reason we rebounded so quickly, and it’s Veeam,” Stein said. “Our entire business continuity and disaster recovery plan revolves around Veeam. If you take Veeam out of the plan, I don’t have a plan — other than updating my resume.”

Stein implemented Veeam more than a decade ago when Backup Exec failed to back up financial services reliably such as ATM debit card readers, loan documents and mortgage applications.

“Our top business priority is availability of financial services to members, and the only solution that could support that priority then and now is Veeam,” Stein said. “It doesn’t matter where a workload lives because Veeam will recover it fast.”

During the CrowdStrike outage, Stein integrated Veeam Agent Recovery Media into Windows Boot Manager, and two hours later, all financial services were available to members.

“If we hadn’t been using Veeam, the only services available in our branches would have been a cup of coffee and an apology,” Stein said.

Credit union members count on financial services being available whenever they need them, and Veeam ensures they are. In addition to delivering data resilience, Veeam strengthens cyber resilience through immutable backups in object storage. It also streamlines regulatory compliance with the National Credit Union Administration.

“There’s no doubt Veeam keeps the credit union running,” Stein said. “When we get hit with ransomware — and it’s no longer if we get hit, it’s when we get hit — Veeam will save us. Why? Veeam verifies recoverability of immutable backups and recovers them instantly.”

Stein is referring to Veeam DataLabs SureBackup and Instant Recovery, which he said support regulatory compliance too.

“It takes just a few minutes to show auditors these processes, shaving hours off an audit,” Stein said. “We appreciate the time savings, and so do they.”

Veeam reduces recovery time for Microsoft 365 data too. When an employee fell prey to a phishing scam that breached his email account, the credit union closed his account and used Veeam to restore his emails to a new account fast.

“First we tried to restore emails to his new account using Microsoft Outlook, but it failed,” Stein said. “You never lose access or control of Microsoft 365 data with Veeam.”

• Ensures financial services are always available to credit union members 
  “Our members depend on us to process their financial transactions, and we depend on Veeam for data resilience,” Stein said.
• Strengthens cyber resilience with encryption and immutability in object storage 
  “We can’t prevent a cyberattack, but we can dramatically reduce the time it takes to recover from one,” Stein said.
• Streamlines regulatory compliance with the National Credit Union Administration 
  “Auditors need proof we can restore from a backup, so showing them how SureBackup and Instant Recovery work saves all of us from lengthy backup strategy discussions,” Stein said.