Local credit unions face system outages from data center failure
SRU Federal Credit Union is now saying its “core systems” are expected to be restored sometime today, Friday, Sept. 18, after a hardware failure at a data center disrupted its services, along with hundreds of other credit unions in the eastern United States.
According to a statement on the credit union’s website, its technology provider experienced a service disruption “related to a cooling failure at the third-party data center that hosts its systems.” SRU Federal Credit Union could not be immediately reached by the Eagle.
“This is a service availability issue, not a security incident. There has been no data breach or unauthorized access to member data identified,” a system update posted on its website read on Sept. 16.
Services like online and mobile banking and debit card transactions are impacted.
SRU Federal Credit Union posted a message Friday morning that its technology provider said “our core systems are expected to be restored today. We will continue to provide additional service updates as soon as they become available.”
First Choice Federal Credit Union of New Castle has also been affected by the disruption.
“At noon on Tuesday, a hardware failure at one of our service provider’s data centers caused hundreds of credit unions east of the Mississippi to go offline,” a message posted by Michael Vatter of First Choice Federal Credit Union read. “This was not a cyberattack. No systems were hacked, and we have been assured that all member data remains secure.”
According to First Choice, the service provider is Sharetec, a digital banking software company based in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The company also has offices in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Vatter told the Eagle he was informed services should be restored by the end of the day.
“Technical teams have now been working continuously for more than 56 hours to restore service. At this time, approximately 100 credit unions have been brought back online, and we are anxiously awaiting our turn,” his message read.
According to the National Credit Union Service Organization, SRU Federal Credit Union has over 4,400 members. Over 9,500 use New Castle-based First Choice.
As for other local credit unions around Butler, Armco Credit Union said it is not on the same processing center as those affected, and has not been impacted. Top Tier Federal Credit Union also said they were not impacted by the issue.
