The outage was said to be caused by a technical error at an Equinix data centre used by the lenders. Equinix subsequently said that the outage was caused by a vendor contractor’s mistake. This created a technical issue with its chilled water system which caused some of the data centre’s halls to overheat and subsequently affected the operations of its tenants.
The last time UOB saw its digital services disrupted was in February 2022. The disruption lasted for several hours and was only resolved “in the early hours” of the next day. At the time, the bank revealed that the disruption was not due to a cyberattack or breach and that its system remained “secure”.
In comparison, fellow local lender DBS Bank experienced several service outages, with five disruptions just this year alone. One of its more recent outages took place on Oct 14, when its customers, as well as Citibank’s customers, experienced issues accessing banking services. Services by both banks were fully restored the next day.
