I have noted that none of the journalists have asked the question I want them to ask (not as if they will get an honest answer) - was this a straight forward 'technical' matter or was it a cyber attack??

There have been mounting warnings for businesses to be prepared as many people - from geeky yobs to countries such as China - are improving their skills at nobbling organisations IT systems. I know of some huge IT failures that have been due to viruses, some of them were perhaps placed intentionally into the IT systems. One organisation in particular were so confident that their system was 'fire proof' they didn't even prepare water tight contingency plans, so had to react on the hoof and took 72 hours to fix the defect and another month to recover.

There will be a big attack one day. It won't be as photographically dramatic as 9/11 or 7/7, but when the lights go out, water in your tap dries up and food in Tesco is not replaced - we will all know about it

So was Nat West nobbled???

NatWest sacked 1,800 highly-trained and experienced UK IT staff, the last having left a few weeks ago. NatWest now has virtually no staff who understand how its banking systems work in the UK or employed by it. All the 'work' and 'testing' is now carried out by 800 'contractors' in India. The replacements have demonstrated they do not have a clue what they are doing.

Who, out of the senior management who signed this off, who thought 'IT is not at the heart of what we do, let's outsource it', who decided 'these guys in India know what they are doing' is going to take responsibility for this fiasco?

If you're a customer, these are the two questions you need answered next week:

1. Are you going bring the design and maintenance of your IT infrastructure back to the UK and under your control?

2. Has Susan Allen, Director, Change and Business Services, responsible for 'Transformation Programme across the Retail Division encompassing all channels and functions. Establish Lean capability. Ensure services provided by Business Services (IT, Ops, Property) support delivery of the objectives of the RBS UK Retail, Wealth and Ulster businesses' resigned yet?

If the answer to either question is no, move your accounts to another bank next week. If you can, if the systems are working again before the next IT disaster.

PS The problem was caused by a botched 'upgrade' to the CA7 batch scheduling suite and the loss of the schedule. There is, of course, no RBS employee left in the UK who understands this any longer.

This is an example of how most banks and finance companies have employed cheap Indian IT workers (or bobs as they are known in our industry) to nick our jobs at much cheaper rates (in this case on a pay of 11K - which is quite high for india). In the UK, we have years of experience of running large computer systems smoothly but over the last few years, banks like RBS have decided to commoditise IT and think any old idiot can do it and so fired us and replaced us with cheap workers who dont know what they are doing or how important something like this is. Clearly a bob made a mistake here as (I suspect that he was trying to test a change on the test system but accidentally applied it to the real, production system). It is this kind of stupidity is what you get by employing isolated bobs and I hope that RBS managers are bricking themselves.

What is bizarre is that these managers would have got a huge bonus for sacking us and setting up a cut price operation but the bob himself, isolated out in the corner of India and one who is not aware of BBC or other UK news, has no idea that he pushed the wrong button and pushed 12 million Brits to the point of starvation or homelessness.

After this incident, here's my prediction for the post mortem within RBS - Senior managers, determined to defend their bonuses will be looking for blood. In India, the bobs will close rank and go silent and not say who did what or how it went wrong - their will be total radio silence and the Ivory tower managers in the UK will not know who to sack. There are probably a handful of UK IT workers left who have been up to now, brow beaten by management into handing over their hard earned knowledge before they get the boot. Since the managements cannot kick the bobs, those last few UK workers will now face the wrath of angry managers. I feel very sorry for those guys.

I wish I could, I still can't log on. I have tried about a dozen times since yesterday morning but haven't managed to get on once!!

I think it is time to change banks again!

I can just imagine how this happened... Project Manager: OK we go live on Tuesday night with the upgrade. Techies: We've not finished testing it yet. Project Manager: The project plan [with dates I chose at random for the GANTT chart] says Tuesday. Techies: We're not confident this version is stable. Project Manager: It says Tuesday. Techies: It might not work properly. Project Manager: Tuesday is go-live day.
Andrew, Derby, UK, 25/6/2012 8:09

The Head of Mi5 makes an amazing (curiously timed) claim that a listed company lost £800m in cyber attack. Odd isn't it, that a loss on this magnitude could be kept secret?

This is more ammunition to make cynics like me wonder the true cause of Nat West's ongoing IT problems. I am not obsessed by this subject - honestly - it's just that I have been waiting for the first big cyber attack in the public eye and always predicted that a generic technical glitch would be used as the cover excuse. Makes you wonder doesn't it?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a970810c-bef2 ... z1yrtq7RZV

http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/rbsulster-glitch-slog-survey-of-users-plus-analysis-of-the-numbers-raise-further-doubts/

What one can – and should – observe is that the cashflow savings created for RBS by this uniquely insoluble techno problem vastly outweigh anything it might offer the customer once the crisis has passed. Take a look at these numbers:

Income in March 2012 was down almost £1billion year on year. Credit adjustment losses quadrupled over the same period, and the loss before tax was ten times higher.

Further, according to Reuters daily statements last week, RBS cash assets stood at £82bn, whereas net loans were recorded as £476bn.

But this might be the clincher: total deposits came in at £476bn…exactly the same as loans. However, the difference between total assets and total liabilities was around £60bn in the bank’s favour. Given the amount of potential toxic write-off in the RBS group – and any ‘rush’ following a downgrade – it wouldn’t require much to change that positive into a disturbing negative. With total fluid assets standing at around £930bn, zero outgoings over five days of a ‘computer glitch’ would give the bank a £73bn windfall. More than enough to stave off a crisis, and at least temporarily restore creditor confidence, if such was needed. At the same time, of course, it physically barred the way to a run on the bank.

I don’t think this is the end of the matter: it might even be the start of some very nasty matter weeping from an infected wound. This morning, for example, the Daily Telegraph’s main headline reports that the ‘glitch’ that was over will in fact continue for another two days at least.