关于申报第九批国家认定企业技术中心的通知
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关于申报第九批国家认定企业技术中心的通知
中华人民共和国国家经济贸易委员会
技术函[2002]20号
关于申报第九批国家认定企业技术中心的通知
各省、自治区、直辖市、计划单列市及新疆生产建设兵团经贸委（经委），国务院有关部门，有关中央管理企业：
为进一步推动企业技术中心的建设与发展，经研究，拟开始第九批国家认定企业技术中心的申报工作，现将有关事宜通知如下：
一、根据国家认定企业技术中心的申请条件和程序，在省市和行业已认定技术中心基础上，选择技术中心建设成效突出，具备较强规模实力和创新能力，在行业中处于领先地位，发挥重要作用的企业技术中心推荐国家认定。
二、申报企业应根据国家经贸委二OO二年第24号公告，准备企业技术中心评价材料及申报材料，于6月20日前报国家经贸委技术进步与装备司。
三、各省市经贸委推荐企业不超过两家。
国家经贸委技术进步与装备司
二ＯＯ二年五月二十二日
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终止劳动关系的法律界定
——从媒体报道唐小东被解职谈起
中国劳动关系学院 张喜亮 北京同联广顺劳动事务咨询中心主任 张攀顺
劳动者与用人单位建立的劳动关系是受法律调整的劳动关系，按照《中华人民共和国劳动法》第十六条规定：“劳动合同是劳动者与用人单位确立劳动关系、明确双方权利和义务的协议。建立劳动关系应当订立劳动合同。”订立劳动合同是产生劳动法律关系的法律事实。既然建立劳动关系是一种法律行为，那么，终止劳动关系也必须依法办理。
各家媒体对北京三环相模新技术有限公司总务经理兼工会主席唐小东解职一案做了很多的报道。笔者发现各则报道虽然义愤填膺，但是，从法律专业的角度，却有点丈二和尚摸不着头脑，不知所云。其中主要的问题是，北京三环相模新技术有限公司对其总务经理兼工会主席唐小东所做的处理究竟是解除职务，还是解除劳动合同，或是予以开除？各家记者用词不尽相同，说法不一。笔者这里用了“解职”一词，其实也是似是而非的。解职可以理解成解除了唐小东的总务经理的职务，也可以理解成是解除了唐小东的“工职”即解除了职业关系。其实，从法律意义上说，开除、除名，辞职、离职，解除劳动合同、终止劳动合同，所有这些在我们一般的理解中，似乎都是一回事；总之是企业不让唐小东再上班了，唐小东失业了，——劳动关系终止了。但是，这些用语的法律意义的不同的，尤其是在仲裁或诉讼的程序中，这些不同对于争取当事人的权益至关重要。从对唐小东的案件报道及唐小东的代理人向海淀区法院提起的诉讼请求被驳回，笔者认为在法律上澄清这些术语，特别是关于解除劳动合同的法律界定，是极其必要的。
第一，解除职务，是企业管理的权限。依照《中华人民共和国劳动法》第四条的规定，企业有责任建立和完善规章制度。职工奖惩制度、经理人员管理制度、公司守则等等都是企业的最基本的管理制度。对于那些担任一定管理职务的领导人员，根据其业绩及过失情况给予奖励和处理。关于对担任一定职务的领导人员予以行政处理，完全是企业自主权的范围；当然被处理的人员依照有关的管理制度应当具有申辩的权利。凡属于这样的企业自主权范围内的行为，法律一般是不受理的。如果北京三环相模新技术有限公司仅仅是对唐小东做出了“解除总务经理职务”的处理，依法唐小东不应当通过劳动争议仲裁或诉讼程序处理，如果一定要走仲裁或诉讼程序，诉讼请求应当集中在违法或违约“变更”劳动合同关于岗位的规定提出主张。2003年北京三环相模新技术有限公司解除其总务经理职务、责令唐小东居家思过的决定，是明确的“解职”。海淀区工会及劳动行政部门与公司协商交涉，公司决定撤销处理决定。这是最佳的解决方式，但这不是司法程序。
第二，开除、除名也是企业对职工的一种具有行政性质的处分或处理。但是，这两种情况则受到法律控制的行为，即必须依法处理，引起争议纳入劳动争议处理的程序处理。开除和除名不能仅仅依据企业自有的规章制度，还必须依照国务院颁布的《职工奖惩条例》规定的实体条款和程序条款，做出处理决定方为有效。开除和除名的性质也是不同的。开除是企业对职工的一种行政性的处分，是《职工奖惩条例规定》的八项处分之最严重的一种。开除就意味着终止了劳动关系，这也是一种剥夺职工劳动权益的一种行为；因此，如果由此而发生纠纷，视为劳动争议，通过劳动仲裁或诉讼程序解决。除名也是一种剥夺职工劳动权益的行为，但是，除名不是对职工的行政处分而是一种专门性的处理。开除的实体要件一定是职工有错误的行为且情节严重；除名则只是针对那些连续旷工15天或年累计旷工30天者做出的专门性的处理；旷工的理由不是免除处理的充分必要条件。辞职和离职与开除、除名又不同，虽然这两种情况也是在《职工奖惩条例》中做出的规定，但是，这两种行为都是以职工方为主动，企业只能根据这样的事实依法做出解除劳动合同的处理。
第三，解除劳动合同则是指劳动关系依法提前终止的行为。解除劳动合同是一种严肃的法律行为，必须依法做出决定而不能任由企业自主裁量。《中华人民共和国劳动法》第二十四条、第二十五条、第二十六条、第二十七条、第三十一条和第三十二条就是对解除劳动合同要件的具体规定。概括起来包括三个层次：职工与企业双方协商解除劳动合同；企业单方解除与职工的劳动合同；职工单方解除与企业的劳动合同。企业单方解除与职工的劳动合同又分为三个层次：即职工有过错而被企业解除劳动合同；职工有原因而被解除劳动合同；企业履行法定程序裁减人员。职工单方与企业解除劳动合同分为两个层次：即职工履行法定程序解除与企业的劳动合同和职工无过错而单方解除与企业劳动合同。无论是企业单方解除与职工的劳动合同，还是职工单方解除与企业的劳动合同，都必须严格遵守《中华人民共和国劳动法》规定的实体要件和程序要件。还需要特别注意的是，企业无论因为什么原因或依据《中华人民共和国劳动法》的哪条规定单方解除与职工的劳动合同，都必须依法事先将理由通知工会；这也是单方面解除与职工劳动合同的无条件程序规定；其根据就是修改后的工会法。《中华人民共和国工会法》第二十一条规定：“企业单方面解除职工劳动合同时，应当事先将理由通知工会，工会认为企业违反法律、法规和有关劳动合同，要求重新处理时，企业应当研究工会的意见，并将处理结果书面通知工会。”
第四，终止劳动合同有依法两种有两种情况，一种是劳动合同约定的终止条件出现，依据约定劳动合同失效，劳动关系不复存在；另一种是劳动合同约定的终止期限届满，劳动合同终止，劳动关系不复存在。一般而言，劳动合同期满终止是最普遍常见的，也有约定条件终止的情况。值得注意的就是：按照劳动部的有关政策规定，在劳动合同中不但将解除劳动合同的法定条款约定为终止劳动合同的要件，以规避法律规定的相应承担的经济补偿之责任。
综上所述，终止劳动关系的具体情况有很多，依照法律之规定其实体要件和程序要件也都不尽相同。当事人正是可以根据法律的规定实体和程序要件的具体要求，提出自己的仲裁或诉讼请求以更好地保护自己的合法权益。从北京三环相模新技术有限公司对唐小东终止劳动关系的情况分析，如果仅仅属于解除总务经理职务的问题，最好的办法还是要通过上级工会或政府职能部门的协调予以解决。如果属于解除劳动合同的问题，企业必须在解除其劳动合同前将理由通知工会，因为此案涉及的正是工会主席本人，所以，可以由工会委员会组织的名义提出不同的意见。很显然，北京三环相模新技术有限公司如果没有将解除唐小东劳动合同的理由事先通知本企业工会。依据程序法优先适应于实体法的法律适应原则，此案提请劳动争议仲裁或诉讼，企业都将败诉。
China Banking Regulatory Commission
Guidelines on the Risk Management of Commercial Banks’ Information Technology
Chapter I General Provisions
Article 1. Pursuant to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Banking Regulation and Supervision, the Law of the People's Republic of China on Commercial Banks, the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Administration of Foreign-funded Banks, and other applicable laws and regulations, the Guidelines on the Risk Management of Commercial Banks’ Information Technology (hereinafter referred to as the Guidelines) is formulated.
Article 2. The Guidelines apply to all the commercial banks legally incorporated within the territory of the People’s Republic of China.
The Guidelines may apply to other banking institutions including policy banks, rural cooperative banks, urban credit cooperatives, rural credit cooperatives, village banks, loan companies, financial asset management companies, trust and investment companies, finance firms, financial leasing companies, automobile financial companies and money brokers.
Article 3. The term “information technology” stated in the Guidelines shall refer to the system built with computer, communication and software technologies, and employed by commercial banks to handle business transactions, operation management, and internal communication, collaborative work and controls. The term also include IT governance, IT organization structure and IT policies and procedures.
Article 4. The risk of information technology refers to the operational risk, legal risk and reputation risk that are caused by natural factor, human factor, technological loopholes or management deficiencies when using information technology.
Article 5. The objective of information system risk management is to establish an effective mechanism that can identify, measure, monitor, and control the risks of commercial banks’ information system, ensure data integrity, availability, confidentiality and consistency, provide the relevant early warning, and thereby enable commercial banks’ business innovations, uplift their capability in utilizing information technology, improve their core competitiveness and capacity for sustainable development.
Chapter II IT governance
Article 6. The legal representative of commercial bank should be responsible to ensure compliance of this guideline.
Article 7. The board of directors of commercial banks should have the following responsibilities with respect to the management of information systems:
(1) Implementing and complying with the national laws, regulations and technical standards pertaining to the management of information systems, as well as the regulatory requirements set by the China Banking Regulatory Commission (hereinafter referred to as the “CBRC”);
(2) Periodically reviewing the alignment of IT strategy with the overall business strategies and significant policies of the bank, assessing the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the IT organization.
(3) Approving IT risk management strategies and policies, understanding the major IT risks involved, setting acceptable levels for these risks, and ensuring the implementation of the measures necessary to identify, measure, monitor and control these risks.
(4) Setting high ethical and integrity standards, and establishing a culture within the bank that emphasizes and demonstrates to all levels of personnel the importance of IT risk management.
(5) Establishing an IT steering committee which consists of representatives from senior management, the IT organization, and major business units, to oversee these responsibilities and report the effectiveness of strategic IT planning, the IT budget and actual expenditure, and the overall IT performance to the board of directors and senior management periodically.
(6) Establishing IT governance structure, proper segregation of duty, clear role and responsibility, maintaining check and balances and clear reporting relationship. Strengthening IT professional staff by developing incentive program.
(7) Ensuring that there is an effective internal audit of the IT risk management carried out by operationally independent, well-trained and qualified staff. The internal audit report should be submitted directly to the IT audit committee;
(8) Submitting an annual report to the CBRC and its local offices on information system risk management that has been reviewed and approved by the board of directors ;
(9) Ensuring the appropriating funding necessary for IT risk management works;
(10) Ensuring that all employees of the bank fully understand and adhere to the IT risk management policies and procedures approved by the board of directors and the senior management, and are provided with pertinent training.
(11) Ensuring customer information, financial information, product information and core banking system of the legal entity are held independently within the territory, and complying with the regulatory on-site examination requirements of CBRC and guarding against cross-border risk.
(12) Reporting in a timely manner to the CBRC and its local offices any serious incident of information systems or unexpected event, and quickly respond to it in accordance with the contingency plan;
(13) Cooperating with the CBRC and its local offices in the supervisory inspection of the risk management of information systems, and ensure that supervisory opinions are followed up; and
(14) Performing other related IT risk management tasks.
Article 8. The head of the IT organization, commonly known as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) should report directly to the president. Roles and responsibilities of the CIO should include the following:
(1) Playing a direct role in key decisions for the business development involving the use of IT in the bank;
(2) The CIO should ensure that information systems meet the needs of the bank, and IT strategies, in particular information system development strategies, comply with the overall business strategies and IT risk management policies of the bank;
(3) The CIO should also be responsible for the establishment of an effective and efficient IT organization to carry out the IT functions of the bank. These include the IT budget and expenditure, IT risk management, IT policies, standards and procedures, IT internal controls, professional development, IT project initiatives, IT project management, information system maintenance and upgrade, IT operations, IT infrastructure, Information security, disaster recovery plan (DRP), IT outsourcing, and information system retirement;
(4) Ensuring the effectiveness of IT risk management throughout the organization including all branches.
(5) Organizing professional trainings to improve technical proficiency of staff.
(6) Performing other related IT risk management tasks.
Article 9. Commercial banks should ensure that a clear definition of the IT organization structure and documentation of all job descriptions of important positions are always in place and updated in a timely manner. Staff in each position should meet relevant requirements on professional skills and knowledge. The following risk mitigation measures should be incorporated in the management program of related staff:
(1) Verification of personal information including confirmation of personal identification issued by government, academic credentials, prior work experience, professional qualifications;
(2) Ensuring that IT staff can meet the required professional ethics by checking character reference;
(3) Signing of agreements with employees about understanding of IT policies and guidelines, non-disclosure of confidential information, authorized use of information systems, and adherence to IT policies and procedures; and
(4) Evaluation of the risk of losing key IT personnel, especially during major IT development stage or in a period of unstable IT operations, and the relevant risk mitigation measures such as staff backup arrangement and staff succession plan.
Article 10. Commercial banks should establish or designate a particular department for IT risk management. It should report directly to the CIO and the Chief Risk Officer (or risk management committee), serve as a member of the IT incident response team, and be responsible for coordinating the establishment of policies regarding IT risk management, especially the areas of information security, BCP, and compliance with the CBRC regulations, advising the business departments and IT department in implementing these policies, providing relevant compliance information, conducting on-going assessment of IT risks, and ensuring the follow-up of remediation advice, monitoring and escalating management of IT threats and non-compliance events.
Article 11. Commercial banks should establish a special IT audit role and responsibility within internal audit function, which should put in place IT audit policies and procedures, develop and execute IT audit plan.
Article 12. Commercial banks should put in place policies and procedures to protect intellectual property rights according to laws regarding intellectual properties, ensure purchase of legitimate software and hardware, prevention of the use of pirated software, and the protection of the proprietary rights of IT products developed by the bank, and ensure that these are fully understood and complied by all employees.
Article 13. Commercial banks should, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, disclose the risk profile of their IT normatively and timely.
Chapter III IT Risk Management
Article 14. Commercial banks should formulate an IT strategy that aligns with the overall business plan of the bank, IT risk assessment plan and an IT operational plan that can ensure adequate financial resources and human resources to maintain a stable and secure IT environment.
Article 15. Commercial banks should put in place a comprehensive set of IT risk management policies that include the following areas:
(1) Information security classification policy
(2) System development, testing and maintenance policy
(3) IT operation and maintenance policy
(4) Access control policy
(5) Physical security policy
(6) Personnel security policy
(7) Business Continuity Planning and Crisis and Emergency Management procedure
Article 16. Commercial banks should maintain an ongoing risk identification and assessment process that allows the bank to pinpoint the areas of concern in its information systems, assess the potential impact of the risks on its business, rank the risks, and prioritize mitigation actions and the necessary resources (including outsourcing vendors, product vendors and service vendors).
Article 17. Commercial banks should implement a comprehensive set of risk mitigation measures complying with the IT risk management policies and commensurate with the risk assessment of the bank. These mitigation measures should include:
(1) A set of clearly documented IT risk policies, technical standards, and operational procedures, which should be communicated to the staff frequently and kept up to date in a timely manner;
(2) Areas of potential conflicts of interest should be identified, minimized, and subject to careful, independent monitoring. Also it requires that an appropriate control structure is set up to facilitate checks and balances, with control activities defined at every business level, which should include:
- Top level reviews;
- Controls over physical and logical access to data and system;
- Access granted on “need to know” and “minimum authorization” basis;
- A system of approvals and authorizations; and
- A system of verification and reconciliation.
Article 18. Commercial banks should put in place a set of ongoing risk measurement and monitoring mechanisms, which should include
(1) Pre and post-implementation review of IT projects;
(2) Benchmarks for periodic review of system performance;
(3) Reports of incidents and complaints about IT services;
(4) Reports of internal audit, external audit, and issues identified by CBRC; and
(5) Arrangement with vendors and business units for periodic review of service level agreements (SLAs).
(6) The possible impact of new development of technology and new threats to software deployed.
(7) Timely review of operational risk and management controls in operation area.
(8) Assess the risk profile on IT outsourcing projects periodically.
Article 19. Chinese commercial banks operating offshore and the foreign commercial banks in China should comply with the relevant regulatory requirements on information systems in and outside the People’s Republic of China.
Chapter IV Information Security
Article 20. Information technology department of commercial banks should oversee the establishment of an information classification and protection scheme. All employees of the bank should be made aware of the importance of ensuring information confidentiality and provided with the necessary training to fully understand the information protection procedures within their responsibilities.
Article 21. Commercial banks should put in place an information security management function to develop and maintain an ongoing information security management program, promote information security awareness, advise other IT functions on security issues, serve as the leader of IT incident response team, and report the evaluation of the information security of the bank to the IT steering committee periodically. The Information security management program should include Information security standards, strategy, an implementation plan, and an ongoing maintenance plan.
Information security policy should include the following areas:
(1) IT security policy management
(2) Organization information security
(3) Asset management
(4) Personnel security
(5) Physical and environment security
(6) Communication and operation security
(7) Access control and authentication
(8) Acquirement, development and maintenance of information system
(9) Information security event management
(10) Business continuity management
(11) Compliance
Article 22. Commercial banks should have an effective process to manage user authentication and access control. Access to data and system should be strictly limited to authorized individuals whose identity is clearly established, and their activities in the information systems should be limited to the minimum required for their legitimate business use. Appropriate user authentication mechanism commensurate with the classification of information to be accessed should be selected. Timely review and removal of user identity from the system should be implemented when user transfers to a new job or leave the commercial bank.
Article 23. Commercial banks should ensure all physical security zones, such as computer centers or data centers, network closets, areas containing confidential information or critical IT equipment, and respective accountabilities are clearly defined, and appropriate preventive, detective, and recuperative controls are put in place.
Article 24. Commercial banks should divide their networks into logical security domains (hereinafter referred to as the “domain”) with different levels of security. The following security factors have to be assessed in order to define and implement effective security controls, such as physical or logical segregation of network, network filtering, logical access control, traffic encryption, network monitoring, activity log, etc., for each domain and the whole network.
(1) criticality of the applications and user groups within the domain;
(2) Access points to the domain through various communication channels;
(3) Network protocols and ports used by the applications and network equipment deployed within the domain;
(4) Performance requirement or benchmark;
(5) Nature of the domain, i.e. production or testing, internal or external;
(6) Connectivity between various domains; and
(7) Trustworthiness of the domain.
Article 25. Commercial banks should secure the operating system and system software of all computer systems by
(1) Developing baseline security requirement for each operating system and ensuring all systems meet the baseline security requirement;
(2) Clearly defining a set of access privileges for different groups of users, namely, end-users, system development staff, computer operators, and system administrators and user administrators;
(3) Setting up a system of approval, verification, and monitoring procedures for using the highest privileged system accounts;
(4) Requiring technical staff to review available security patches, and report the patch status periodically; and
(5) Requiring technical staff to include important items such as unsuccessful logins, access to critical system files, changes made to user accounts, etc. in system logs, monitors the systems for any abnormal event manually or automatically, and report the monitoring periodically.
Article 26. Commercial banks should ensure the security of all the application systems by
(1) Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of end-users and IT staff regarding the application security;
(2) Implementing a robust authentication method commensurate with the criticality and sensibility of the application system;
(3) Enforcing segregation of duties and dual control over critical or sensitive functions;
(4) Requiring verification of input or reconciliation of output at critical junctures;
(5) Requiring the input and output of confidential information are handled in a secure manner to prevent theft, tampering, intentional leakage, or inadvertent leakage;
(6) Ensuring system can handle exceptions in a predefined way and provide meaningful message to users when the system is forced to terminate; and
(7) Maintaining audit trail in either paper or electronic format.
(8) Requiring user administrator to monitor and review unsuccessful logins and changes to users accounts.
Article 27. Commercial banks should have a set of policies and procedures controlling the logging of activities in all production systems to support effective auditing, security forensic analysis, and fraud prevention. Logging can be implemented in different layers of software and on different computer and networking equipment, which falls into two broad categories:
(1) Transaction journals. They are generated by application software and database management system, and contain authentication attempts, modification to data, error messages, etc. Transaction journals should be kept according to the national accounting policy.
(2) System logs. They are generated by operating systems, database management system, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and routers, etc., and contain authentication attempts, system events, network events, error messages, etc. System logs should be kept for a period scaled to the risk classification, but no less than one year.
Banks should ensure that sufficient items be included in the logs to facilitate effective internal controls, system troubleshooting, and auditing while taking appropriate measures to ensure time synchronization on all logs. Sufficient disk space should be allocated to prevent logs from being overwritten. System logs should be reviewed for any exception. The review frequency and retention period for transaction logs or database logs should be determined jointly by IT organization and pertinent business lines, and approved by the IT steering committee.
Article 28. Commercial banks should have the capacity to employ encryption technologies to mitigate the risk of losing confidential information in the information systems or during its transmission. Appropriate management processes of the encryption facilities should be put in place to ensure that
(1) Encryption facilities in use should meet national security standards or requirements;
(2) Staff in charge of encryption facilities are well trained and screened;
(3) Encryption strength is adequate to protect the confidentiality of the information; and
(4) Effective and efficient key management procedures, especially key lifecycle management and certificate lifecycle management, are in place.
Article 29. Commercial banks should put in place an effective and efficient system of securing all end-user computing equipment which include desktop personal computers (PCs), portable PCs, teller terminals, automatic teller machines (ATMs), passbook printers, debit or credit card readers, point of sale (POS) terminals, personal digital assistant (PDAs), etc and conduct periodic security checks on all equipments.
Article 30. Commercial banks should put in place a set of policies and procedures to govern the collection, processing, storage, transmission, dissemination, and disposal of customer information.
Article 31. All employees, including contract staff, should be provided with the necessary trainings to fully understand these policies procedures and the consequences of their violation. Commercial banks should adopt a zero tolerance policy against security violation.
Chapter V Application System Development, Testing and Maintenance
Article 32. Commercial banks should have the capability to identify, plan, acquire, develop, test, deploy, maintain, upgrade, and retire information systems. Policies and procedures should be in place to govern the initiation, prioritization, approval, and control of IT projects. Progress reports of major IT projects should be submitted to and reviewed by the IT steering committee periodically. Decisions involving significant change of schedule, change of key personnel, change of vendors, and major expenditures should be included in the progress report.
Article 33. Commercial banks should recognize the risks associated with IT projects, which include the possibilities of incurring various kinds of operational risk, financial losses, and opportunity costs stemming from ineffective project planning or inadequate project management controls of the bank. Therefore, appropriate project management methodologies should be adopted and implemented to control the risks associated with IT projects.
Article 34. Commercial banks should adopt and implement a system development methodology to control the life cycle of Information systems. The typical phases of system life cycle include system analysis, design, development or acquisition, testing, trial run, deployment, maintenance, and retirement. The system development methodology to be used should be commensurate with the size, nature, and complexity of the IT project, and, generally speaking, should facilitate the management of the following risks.
Article 35. Commercial banks should ensure system reliability, integrity, and maintainability by controlling system changes with a set of policies and procedures, which should include the following elements.
(1) Ensure that production systems are separated from development or testing systems;
(2) Separating the duties of managing production systems and managing development or testing systems;
(3) Prohibiting application development and maintenance staff from accessing production system under normal circumstances unless management approval is granted to perform emergency repair, and all emergency repair activities should be recorded and reviewed promptly;
(4) Promoting changes of program or system configuration from development and testing systems to production systems should be jointly approved by IT organization and business departments, properly documented, and reviewed periodically.
Article 36. Commercial banks should have in place a set of policies, standards, and procedures to ensure data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. These policies should be in accordance with data integrity amid IT development procedure.
Article 37. Commercial banks should ensure that Information system problems could be tracked, analyzed, and resolved systematically through an effective problem management process. Problems should be documented, categorized, and indexed. Support services or technical assistance from vendors, if necessary, should also be documented. Contacts and relevant contract information should be made readily available to the employees concerned. Accountability and line of command should be delineated clearly and communicated to all employees concerned, which is of utmost importance to performing emergency repair.
Article 38. Commercial banks should have a set of policies and procedures controlling the process of system upgrade. System upgrade is needed when the hardware reaches its lifespan or runs out of capacity, the underpinning software, namely, operating system, database management system, middleware, has to be upgraded, or the application software has to be upgraded. The system upgrade should be treated as a project and managed by all pertinent project management controls including user acceptance testing.
Chapter VI IT Operations
Article 39. Commercial banks should consider fully the environmental threats (e.g. proximity to natural disaster zones, dangerous or hazardous facilities or busy/major roads) when selecting the locations of their data centers. Physical and environmental controls should be implemented to monitor environmental conditions could affect adversely the operation of information processing facilities. Equipment facilities should be protected from power failures and electrical supply interference.
Article 40. In controlling access by third-party personnel (e.g. service providers) to secured areas, proper approval of access should be enforced and their activities should be closely monitored. It is important that proper screening procedures including verification and background checks, especially for sensitive technology-related jobs, are developed for permanent and temporary technical staff and contractors.
Article 41. Commercial banks should separate IT operations or computer center operations from system development and maintenance to ensure segregation of duties within the IT organization. The commercial banks should document the roles and responsibilities of data center functions.
Article 42. Commercial banks are required to retain transactional records in compliance with the national accounting policy. Procedures and technology are needed to be put in place to ensure the integrity, safekeeping and retrieval requirements of the archived data.
Article 43. Commercial banks should detail operational instructions such as computer operator tasks, job scheduling and execution in the IT operations manual. The IT operations manual should also cover the procedures and requirements for on-site and off-site backup of data and software in both the production and development environments (i.e. frequency, scope and retention periods of back-up).
Article 44. Commercial banks should have in place a problem management and processing system to respond promptly to IT operations incidents, to escalate reported incidents to relevant IT management staff and to record, analyze and keep tracks of all these incidents until rectification of the incidents with root cause analysis completed. A helpdesk function should be set up to provide front-line support to users on all technology-related problems and to direct the problems to relevant IT functions for investigation and resolution.
Article 45. Commercial banks should establish service level agreement and assess the IT service level standard attained.
Article 46. Commercial banks should implement a process to ensure that the performance of application systems is continuously monitored and exceptions are reported in a timely and comprehensive manner. The performance monitoring process should include forecasting capability to enable exceptions to be identified and corrected before they affect system performance.
Article 47. Commercial banks should carry out capacity plan to cater for business growth and transaction increases due to changes of economic conditions. Capacity plan should be extended to cover back-up systems and related facilities in addition to the production environment.
Article 48. Commercial banks should ensure the continued availability of technology related services with timely maintenance and appropriate system upgrades. Proper record keeping (including suspected and actual faults and preventive and corrective maintenance records) is necessary for effective facility and equipment maintenance.
Article 49. Commercial banks should have an effective change management process in place to ensure integrity and reliability of the production environment. Commercial banks should develop a formal change management process.
Chapter VII Business Continuity Management
Article 50. Commercial banks should have in place appropriate arrangements, having regard to the nature, scale and complexity of its business, to ensure that it can continue to function and meet its regulatory obligations in the event of an unforeseen interruption. These arrangements should be regularly updated and tested to ensure their effectiveness.
Article 51. Commercial banks should consider the likelihood and impact of a disruption to the continuity of its operation from unexpected events. This should include assessing the disruptions to which it is particularly susceptible including but not limited to:
(1) Loss of failure of internal and external resources (such as people, systems and other assets);
(2) The loss or corruption of its information; and
(3) External events (such as war, earthquake, typhoon, etc).
Article 52. Commercial bank should act to reduce both the likelihood of disruptions (including system resilience and dual processing); and the impact of disruptions (including by contingency arrangements and insurance).
Article 53. Commercial bank should document its strategy for maintaining continuity of its operations, and its plans for communicating and regularly testing the adequacy and effectiveness of this strategy. Commercial bank should establish:
(1) Formal business continuity plans that outline arrangements to reduce the impact of a short, medium and long-term disruption, including:
a) Resource requirements such as people, systems and other assets, and arrangements for obtaining these resources;
b) The recovery priorities for the commercial bank’s operations; and
c) Communication arrangements for internal and external concerned parties (including CBRC, clients and the press);
(2) Escalation and invocation plans that outline the processes for implementing the business continuity plans, together with relevant contact information;
(3) Processes to validate the integrity of information affected by the disruption;
(4) Processes to review and update (1) to (3) following changes to the commercial bank’s operations or risk profile.
Article 54. A final BCP plan and an annual drill result must be signed off by the IT Risk management, or internal auditor and IT Steering Committee.
Chapter VIII Outsourcing
Article 55. Commercial banks cannot contract out its regulatory obligations and should take reasonable care to supervise the discharge of outsourcing functions.
Article 56. Commercial banks should take particular care to manage material outsourcing arrangement (such as outsourcing of data center, IT infrastructure, etc.), and should notify CBRC when it intends to enter into material outsourcing arrangement.
Article 57. Before entering into, or significantly changing, an outsourcing arrangement, the commercial bank should:
(1) Analyze how the arrangement will fit with its organization and reporting structure; business strategy; overall risk profile; and ability to meet its regulatory obligations;
(2) Consider whether the arrangements will allow it to monitor and control its operational risk exposure relating to the outsourcing;
(3) Conduct appropriate due diligence of the service provider’s financial stability, expertise and risk assessment of the service provider, facilities and ability to cover the potential liabilities;
(4) Consider how it will ensure a smooth transition of its operations from its current arrangements to a new or changed outsourcing arrangement (including what will happen on the termination of the contract); and
(5) Consider any concentration risk implications such as the business continuity implications that may arise if a single service provider is used by several firms.
Article 58. In negotiating its contract with a service provider, the commercial bank should have regard to ( but not limited to ):
(1) Reporting and negotiation requirements it may wish to impose on the service provider;
(2) Whether sufficient access will be available to its internal auditors, external auditors and banking regulators;
(3) Information ownership rights, confidentiality agreements and Firewalls to protect client and other information (including arrangements at the termination of contract);
(4) The adequacy of any guarantees and indemnities;
(5) The extent to which the service provider must comply with the commercial bank’s polices and procedures covering IT Risk;
(6) The extent to which the service provider will provide business continuity for outsourced operations, and whether exclusive access to its resources is agreed;
(7) The need for continued availability of software following difficulty at a third party supplier;
(8) The processes for making changes to the outsourcing arrangement and the conditions under which the commercial bank or service provider can choose to change or terminate the outsourcing arrangement, such as where there is:
a) A change of ownership or control of the service provider or commercial bank; or
b) Significant change in the business operations of the service provider or commercial bank; or
c) Inadequate provision of services that may lead to the commercial bank being unable to meet its regulatory obligations.
Article 59. In implementing a relationship management framework, and drafting the service level agreement with the service provider, the commercial bank should have regarded to (but not limited to):
(1) The identification of qualitative and quantitative performance targets to assess the adequacy of service provision, to both the commercial bank and its clients, where appropriate;
(2) The evaluation of performance through service delivery reports and periodic self assessment and independent review by internal or external auditors; and
(3) Remediation action and escalation process for dealing with inadequate performance.
Article 60. The commercial bank should enhance IT related outsourcing management, in place following (not limited to ) measures to ensure data security of sensitive information such as customer information:
(1) Effectively separated from other customer information of the service provider;
(2) The related staff of service provider should be authorized on “need to know” and “minimum authorization” basis;
(3) Ensure service provider guarantee its staff for meeting the confidential requests;
(4) All outsourcing arrangements related to customer information should be identified as material outsourcing arrangements and the customers should be notified;
(5) Strictly monitor re-outsourcing actions of the service provider, and implement adequate control measures to ensure information security of the bank;
(6) Ensure all related sensitive information be refunded or deleted from the service provider’s storage when terminating the outsourcing arrangement.
Article 61. The commercial bank should ensure that it has appropriate contingency in the event of a significant loss of services from the service provider. Particular issues to consider include a significant loss of resources, turnover of key staff, or financial failure of, the service provider, and unexpected termination of the outsourcing agreement.
Article 62. All outsourcing contracts must be reviewed or signed off by IT Risk management, internal IT auditors, legal department and IT Steering Committee. There should be a process to periodically review and refine the service level agreements.
Chapter IX Internal Audit
Article 63. Depending on the nature, scale and complexity of its business, it may be appropriate for the commercial banks to delegate much of the task of monitoring the appropriateness and effectiveness of its systems and controls to an internal audit function. An internal audit function should be adequately resourced and staffed by competent individuals, be independent of the day-to-day activities of the commercial bank and have appropriate access to the bank’s records.
Article 64. The responsibilities of the internal IT audit function are:
(1) To establish, implement and maintain an audit plan to examine and evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of the bank’s systems and internal control mechanisms and arrangements;
(2) To issue recommendations based on the result of work carried out in accordance with 1;
(3) To verify compliance with those recommendations;
(4) To carry out special audit on information technology. The term “special audit” of information technology refers to the investigation, analysis and assessment on the security incidents of the information system, or the audit performed on a special subject based on IT risk assessment result as deemed necessary by the audit department.
Article 65. Based on the nature, scale and complexity of its business, deployment of information technology and IT risk assessment, commercial banks could determine the scope and frequency of IT internal audit. However, a comprehensive IT internal audit shall be performed at a minimum once every 3 years.
Article 66. Commercial banks should engage its internal audit department and IT Risk management department when implementing system development of significant size and scale to ensure it meets the IT Risk standards of the Commercial banks.
Chapter X External Audit
Article 67. The external information technology audit of commercial banks can be carried out by certified service providers in accordance with laws, rules and regulations.
Article 68. The commercial bank should ensure IT audit service provider to review and examine bank’s hardware, software, documentation and data to identify IT risk when they are commissioned to perform the audit. Vital commercial and technical information which is protected by national laws and regulations should not be reviewed.
Article 69. Commercial bank should communicate with the service provider in depth before the audit to determine audit scope, and should not withhold the truth or do not corporate with the service provider intentionally.
Article 70. CBRC and its local offices could designate certified service providers to carry out IT audit or related review on commercial banks when needed. When carrying out audit on commercial banks, as commissioned or authorized by CBRC or its local offices, the service providers shall present the letter of authority, and carry out the audit in accordance to the scope prescribed in the letter of authority.
Article 71. Once the IT audit report produced by the service providers is reviewed and approved by CBRC or its local offices, the report will have the same legal status as if it is produced by the CBRC itself. Commercial banks should come up with a correction action plan prescribed in the report and implement the corrective actions according to the timeframe.
Article 72. Commercial banks should ensure the service providers to strictly comply with laws and regulations to keep confidential and data security of any commercial secrets and private information learnt and IT risk information when conducting the audit. The service provider should not modify copy or take away any documents provided by the commercial banks.
Chapter XI Supplementary Provisions
Article 73. Commercial banks with no board of directors should have their operating decision-making bodies perform the responsibilities of the board with regard to IT risk management specified herein.
Article 74. The China Banking Regulatory Commission supervises and regulates the IT risk management of commercial banks under its authority by law.
Article 75. The power of interpretation and modification of the Guidelines shall rest with the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
Article 76. The Guidelines shall become effective as of the date of its issuance and the former Guidelines on the Risk Management of Banking Institutions’ Information Systems shall be revoked at the same time.
——从媒体报道唐小东被解职谈起
中国劳动关系学院 张喜亮 北京同联广顺劳动事务咨询中心主任 张攀顺
劳动者与用人单位建立的劳动关系是受法律调整的劳动关系，按照《中华人民共和国劳动法》第十六条规定：“劳动合同是劳动者与用人单位确立劳动关系、明确双方权利和义务的协议。建立劳动关系应当订立劳动合同。”订立劳动合同是产生劳动法律关系的法律事实。既然建立劳动关系是一种法律行为，那么，终止劳动关系也必须依法办理。
各家媒体对北京三环相模新技术有限公司总务经理兼工会主席唐小东解职一案做了很多的报道。笔者发现各则报道虽然义愤填膺，但是，从法律专业的角度，却有点丈二和尚摸不着头脑，不知所云。其中主要的问题是，北京三环相模新技术有限公司对其总务经理兼工会主席唐小东所做的处理究竟是解除职务，还是解除劳动合同，或是予以开除？各家记者用词不尽相同，说法不一。笔者这里用了“解职”一词，其实也是似是而非的。解职可以理解成解除了唐小东的总务经理的职务，也可以理解成是解除了唐小东的“工职”即解除了职业关系。其实，从法律意义上说，开除、除名，辞职、离职，解除劳动合同、终止劳动合同，所有这些在我们一般的理解中，似乎都是一回事；总之是企业不让唐小东再上班了，唐小东失业了，——劳动关系终止了。但是，这些用语的法律意义的不同的，尤其是在仲裁或诉讼的程序中，这些不同对于争取当事人的权益至关重要。从对唐小东的案件报道及唐小东的代理人向海淀区法院提起的诉讼请求被驳回，笔者认为在法律上澄清这些术语，特别是关于解除劳动合同的法律界定，是极其必要的。
第一，解除职务，是企业管理的权限。依照《中华人民共和国劳动法》第四条的规定，企业有责任建立和完善规章制度。职工奖惩制度、经理人员管理制度、公司守则等等都是企业的最基本的管理制度。对于那些担任一定管理职务的领导人员，根据其业绩及过失情况给予奖励和处理。关于对担任一定职务的领导人员予以行政处理，完全是企业自主权的范围；当然被处理的人员依照有关的管理制度应当具有申辩的权利。凡属于这样的企业自主权范围内的行为，法律一般是不受理的。如果北京三环相模新技术有限公司仅仅是对唐小东做出了“解除总务经理职务”的处理，依法唐小东不应当通过劳动争议仲裁或诉讼程序处理，如果一定要走仲裁或诉讼程序，诉讼请求应当集中在违法或违约“变更”劳动合同关于岗位的规定提出主张。2003年北京三环相模新技术有限公司解除其总务经理职务、责令唐小东居家思过的决定，是明确的“解职”。海淀区工会及劳动行政部门与公司协商交涉，公司决定撤销处理决定。这是最佳的解决方式，但这不是司法程序。
第二，开除、除名也是企业对职工的一种具有行政性质的处分或处理。但是，这两种情况则受到法律控制的行为，即必须依法处理，引起争议纳入劳动争议处理的程序处理。开除和除名不能仅仅依据企业自有的规章制度，还必须依照国务院颁布的《职工奖惩条例》规定的实体条款和程序条款，做出处理决定方为有效。开除和除名的性质也是不同的。开除是企业对职工的一种行政性的处分，是《职工奖惩条例规定》的八项处分之最严重的一种。开除就意味着终止了劳动关系，这也是一种剥夺职工劳动权益的一种行为；因此，如果由此而发生纠纷，视为劳动争议，通过劳动仲裁或诉讼程序解决。除名也是一种剥夺职工劳动权益的行为，但是，除名不是对职工的行政处分而是一种专门性的处理。开除的实体要件一定是职工有错误的行为且情节严重；除名则只是针对那些连续旷工15天或年累计旷工30天者做出的专门性的处理；旷工的理由不是免除处理的充分必要条件。辞职和离职与开除、除名又不同，虽然这两种情况也是在《职工奖惩条例》中做出的规定，但是，这两种行为都是以职工方为主动，企业只能根据这样的事实依法做出解除劳动合同的处理。
第三，解除劳动合同则是指劳动关系依法提前终止的行为。解除劳动合同是一种严肃的法律行为，必须依法做出决定而不能任由企业自主裁量。《中华人民共和国劳动法》第二十四条、第二十五条、第二十六条、第二十七条、第三十一条和第三十二条就是对解除劳动合同要件的具体规定。概括起来包括三个层次：职工与企业双方协商解除劳动合同；企业单方解除与职工的劳动合同；职工单方解除与企业的劳动合同。企业单方解除与职工的劳动合同又分为三个层次：即职工有过错而被企业解除劳动合同；职工有原因而被解除劳动合同；企业履行法定程序裁减人员。职工单方与企业解除劳动合同分为两个层次：即职工履行法定程序解除与企业的劳动合同和职工无过错而单方解除与企业劳动合同。无论是企业单方解除与职工的劳动合同，还是职工单方解除与企业的劳动合同，都必须严格遵守《中华人民共和国劳动法》规定的实体要件和程序要件。还需要特别注意的是，企业无论因为什么原因或依据《中华人民共和国劳动法》的哪条规定单方解除与职工的劳动合同，都必须依法事先将理由通知工会；这也是单方面解除与职工劳动合同的无条件程序规定；其根据就是修改后的工会法。《中华人民共和国工会法》第二十一条规定：“企业单方面解除职工劳动合同时，应当事先将理由通知工会，工会认为企业违反法律、法规和有关劳动合同，要求重新处理时，企业应当研究工会的意见，并将处理结果书面通知工会。”
第四，终止劳动合同有依法两种有两种情况，一种是劳动合同约定的终止条件出现，依据约定劳动合同失效，劳动关系不复存在；另一种是劳动合同约定的终止期限届满，劳动合同终止，劳动关系不复存在。一般而言，劳动合同期满终止是最普遍常见的，也有约定条件终止的情况。值得注意的就是：按照劳动部的有关政策规定，在劳动合同中不但将解除劳动合同的法定条款约定为终止劳动合同的要件，以规避法律规定的相应承担的经济补偿之责任。
综上所述，终止劳动关系的具体情况有很多，依照法律之规定其实体要件和程序要件也都不尽相同。当事人正是可以根据法律的规定实体和程序要件的具体要求，提出自己的仲裁或诉讼请求以更好地保护自己的合法权益。从北京三环相模新技术有限公司对唐小东终止劳动关系的情况分析，如果仅仅属于解除总务经理职务的问题，最好的办法还是要通过上级工会或政府职能部门的协调予以解决。如果属于解除劳动合同的问题，企业必须在解除其劳动合同前将理由通知工会，因为此案涉及的正是工会主席本人，所以，可以由工会委员会组织的名义提出不同的意见。很显然，北京三环相模新技术有限公司如果没有将解除唐小东劳动合同的理由事先通知本企业工会。依据程序法优先适应于实体法的法律适应原则，此案提请劳动争议仲裁或诉讼，企业都将败诉。
Guidelines on the Risk Management of Commercial Banks’ Information Technology ——附加英文版
Guidelines on the Risk Management of Commercial Banks’ Information Technology
Chapter I General Provisions
Article 1. Pursuant to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Banking Regulation and Supervision, the Law of the People's Republic of China on Commercial Banks, the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Administration of Foreign-funded Banks, and other applicable laws and regulations, the Guidelines on the Risk Management of Commercial Banks’ Information Technology (hereinafter referred to as the Guidelines) is formulated.
Article 2. The Guidelines apply to all the commercial banks legally incorporated within the territory of the People’s Republic of China.
The Guidelines may apply to other banking institutions including policy banks, rural cooperative banks, urban credit cooperatives, rural credit cooperatives, village banks, loan companies, financial asset management companies, trust and investment companies, finance firms, financial leasing companies, automobile financial companies and money brokers.
Article 3. The term “information technology” stated in the Guidelines shall refer to the system built with computer, communication and software technologies, and employed by commercial banks to handle business transactions, operation management, and internal communication, collaborative work and controls. The term also include IT governance, IT organization structure and IT policies and procedures.
Article 4. The risk of information technology refers to the operational risk, legal risk and reputation risk that are caused by natural factor, human factor, technological loopholes or management deficiencies when using information technology.
Article 5. The objective of information system risk management is to establish an effective mechanism that can identify, measure, monitor, and control the risks of commercial banks’ information system, ensure data integrity, availability, confidentiality and consistency, provide the relevant early warning, and thereby enable commercial banks’ business innovations, uplift their capability in utilizing information technology, improve their core competitiveness and capacity for sustainable development.
Chapter II IT governance
Article 6. The legal representative of commercial bank should be responsible to ensure compliance of this guideline.
Article 7. The board of directors of commercial banks should have the following responsibilities with respect to the management of information systems:
(1) Implementing and complying with the national laws, regulations and technical standards pertaining to the management of information systems, as well as the regulatory requirements set by the China Banking Regulatory Commission (hereinafter referred to as the “CBRC”);
(2) Periodically reviewing the alignment of IT strategy with the overall business strategies and significant policies of the bank, assessing the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the IT organization.
(3) Approving IT risk management strategies and policies, understanding the major IT risks involved, setting acceptable levels for these risks, and ensuring the implementation of the measures necessary to identify, measure, monitor and control these risks.
(4) Setting high ethical and integrity standards, and establishing a culture within the bank that emphasizes and demonstrates to all levels of personnel the importance of IT risk management.
(5) Establishing an IT steering committee which consists of representatives from senior management, the IT organization, and major business units, to oversee these responsibilities and report the effectiveness of strategic IT planning, the IT budget and actual expenditure, and the overall IT performance to the board of directors and senior management periodically.
(6) Establishing IT governance structure, proper segregation of duty, clear role and responsibility, maintaining check and balances and clear reporting relationship. Strengthening IT professional staff by developing incentive program.
(7) Ensuring that there is an effective internal audit of the IT risk management carried out by operationally independent, well-trained and qualified staff. The internal audit report should be submitted directly to the IT audit committee;
(8) Submitting an annual report to the CBRC and its local offices on information system risk management that has been reviewed and approved by the board of directors ;
(9) Ensuring the appropriating funding necessary for IT risk management works;
(10) Ensuring that all employees of the bank fully understand and adhere to the IT risk management policies and procedures approved by the board of directors and the senior management, and are provided with pertinent training.
(11) Ensuring customer information, financial information, product information and core banking system of the legal entity are held independently within the territory, and complying with the regulatory on-site examination requirements of CBRC and guarding against cross-border risk.
(12) Reporting in a timely manner to the CBRC and its local offices any serious incident of information systems or unexpected event, and quickly respond to it in accordance with the contingency plan;
(13) Cooperating with the CBRC and its local offices in the supervisory inspection of the risk management of information systems, and ensure that supervisory opinions are followed up; and
(14) Performing other related IT risk management tasks.
Article 8. The head of the IT organization, commonly known as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) should report directly to the president. Roles and responsibilities of the CIO should include the following:
(1) Playing a direct role in key decisions for the business development involving the use of IT in the bank;
(2) The CIO should ensure that information systems meet the needs of the bank, and IT strategies, in particular information system development strategies, comply with the overall business strategies and IT risk management policies of the bank;
(3) The CIO should also be responsible for the establishment of an effective and efficient IT organization to carry out the IT functions of the bank. These include the IT budget and expenditure, IT risk management, IT policies, standards and procedures, IT internal controls, professional development, IT project initiatives, IT project management, information system maintenance and upgrade, IT operations, IT infrastructure, Information security, disaster recovery plan (DRP), IT outsourcing, and information system retirement;
(4) Ensuring the effectiveness of IT risk management throughout the organization including all branches.
(5) Organizing professional trainings to improve technical proficiency of staff.
(6) Performing other related IT risk management tasks.
Article 9. Commercial banks should ensure that a clear definition of the IT organization structure and documentation of all job descriptions of important positions are always in place and updated in a timely manner. Staff in each position should meet relevant requirements on professional skills and knowledge. The following risk mitigation measures should be incorporated in the management program of related staff:
(1) Verification of personal information including confirmation of personal identification issued by government, academic credentials, prior work experience, professional qualifications;
(2) Ensuring that IT staff can meet the required professional ethics by checking character reference;
(3) Signing of agreements with employees about understanding of IT policies and guidelines, non-disclosure of confidential information, authorized use of information systems, and adherence to IT policies and procedures; and
(4) Evaluation of the risk of losing key IT personnel, especially during major IT development stage or in a period of unstable IT operations, and the relevant risk mitigation measures such as staff backup arrangement and staff succession plan.
Article 10. Commercial banks should establish or designate a particular department for IT risk management. It should report directly to the CIO and the Chief Risk Officer (or risk management committee), serve as a member of the IT incident response team, and be responsible for coordinating the establishment of policies regarding IT risk management, especially the areas of information security, BCP, and compliance with the CBRC regulations, advising the business departments and IT department in implementing these policies, providing relevant compliance information, conducting on-going assessment of IT risks, and ensuring the follow-up of remediation advice, monitoring and escalating management of IT threats and non-compliance events.
Article 11. Commercial banks should establish a special IT audit role and responsibility within internal audit function, which should put in place IT audit policies and procedures, develop and execute IT audit plan.
Article 12. Commercial banks should put in place policies and procedures to protect intellectual property rights according to laws regarding intellectual properties, ensure purchase of legitimate software and hardware, prevention of the use of pirated software, and the protection of the proprietary rights of IT products developed by the bank, and ensure that these are fully understood and complied by all employees.
Article 13. Commercial banks should, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, disclose the risk profile of their IT normatively and timely.
Chapter III IT Risk Management
Article 14. Commercial banks should formulate an IT strategy that aligns with the overall business plan of the bank, IT risk assessment plan and an IT operational plan that can ensure adequate financial resources and human resources to maintain a stable and secure IT environment.
Article 15. Commercial banks should put in place a comprehensive set of IT risk management policies that include the following areas:
(1) Information security classification policy
(2) System development, testing and maintenance policy
(3) IT operation and maintenance policy
(4) Access control policy
(5) Physical security policy
(6) Personnel security policy
(7) Business Continuity Planning and Crisis and Emergency Management procedure
Article 16. Commercial banks should maintain an ongoing risk identification and assessment process that allows the bank to pinpoint the areas of concern in its information systems, assess the potential impact of the risks on its business, rank the risks, and prioritize mitigation actions and the necessary resources (including outsourcing vendors, product vendors and service vendors).
Article 17. Commercial banks should implement a comprehensive set of risk mitigation measures complying with the IT risk management policies and commensurate with the risk assessment of the bank. These mitigation measures should include:
(1) A set of clearly documented IT risk policies, technical standards, and operational procedures, which should be communicated to the staff frequently and kept up to date in a timely manner;
(2) Areas of potential conflicts of interest should be identified, minimized, and subject to careful, independent monitoring. Also it requires that an appropriate control structure is set up to facilitate checks and balances, with control activities defined at every business level, which should include:
- Top level reviews;
- Controls over physical and logical access to data and system;
- Access granted on “need to know” and “minimum authorization” basis;
- A system of approvals and authorizations; and
- A system of verification and reconciliation.
Article 18. Commercial banks should put in place a set of ongoing risk measurement and monitoring mechanisms, which should include
(1) Pre and post-implementation review of IT projects;
(2) Benchmarks for periodic review of system performance;
(3) Reports of incidents and complaints about IT services;
(4) Reports of internal audit, external audit, and issues identified by CBRC; and
(5) Arrangement with vendors and business units for periodic review of service level agreements (SLAs).
(6) The possible impact of new development of technology and new threats to software deployed.
(7) Timely review of operational risk and management controls in operation area.
(8) Assess the risk profile on IT outsourcing projects periodically.
Article 19. Chinese commercial banks operating offshore and the foreign commercial banks in China should comply with the relevant regulatory requirements on information systems in and outside the People’s Republic of China.
Chapter IV Information Security
Article 20. Information technology department of commercial banks should oversee the establishment of an information classification and protection scheme. All employees of the bank should be made aware of the importance of ensuring information confidentiality and provided with the necessary training to fully understand the information protection procedures within their responsibilities.
Article 21. Commercial banks should put in place an information security management function to develop and maintain an ongoing information security management program, promote information security awareness, advise other IT functions on security issues, serve as the leader of IT incident response team, and report the evaluation of the information security of the bank to the IT steering committee periodically. The Information security management program should include Information security standards, strategy, an implementation plan, and an ongoing maintenance plan.
Information security policy should include the following areas:
(1) IT security policy management
(2) Organization information security
(3) Asset management
(4) Personnel security
(5) Physical and environment security
(6) Communication and operation security
(7) Access control and authentication
(8) Acquirement, development and maintenance of information system
(9) Information security event management
(10) Business continuity management
(11) Compliance
Article 22. Commercial banks should have an effective process to manage user authentication and access control. Access to data and system should be strictly limited to authorized individuals whose identity is clearly established, and their activities in the information systems should be limited to the minimum required for their legitimate business use. Appropriate user authentication mechanism commensurate with the classification of information to be accessed should be selected. Timely review and removal of user identity from the system should be implemented when user transfers to a new job or leave the commercial bank.
Article 23. Commercial banks should ensure all physical security zones, such as computer centers or data centers, network closets, areas containing confidential information or critical IT equipment, and respective accountabilities are clearly defined, and appropriate preventive, detective, and recuperative controls are put in place.
Article 24. Commercial banks should divide their networks into logical security domains (hereinafter referred to as the “domain”) with different levels of security. The following security factors have to be assessed in order to define and implement effective security controls, such as physical or logical segregation of network, network filtering, logical access control, traffic encryption, network monitoring, activity log, etc., for each domain and the whole network.
(1) criticality of the applications and user groups within the domain;
(2) Access points to the domain through various communication channels;
(3) Network protocols and ports used by the applications and network equipment deployed within the domain;
(4) Performance requirement or benchmark;
(5) Nature of the domain, i.e. production or testing, internal or external;
(6) Connectivity between various domains; and
(7) Trustworthiness of the domain.
Article 25. Commercial banks should secure the operating system and system software of all computer systems by
(1) Developing baseline security requirement for each operating system and ensuring all systems meet the baseline security requirement;
(2) Clearly defining a set of access privileges for different groups of users, namely, end-users, system development staff, computer operators, and system administrators and user administrators;
(3) Setting up a system of approval, verification, and monitoring procedures for using the highest privileged system accounts;
(4) Requiring technical staff to review available security patches, and report the patch status periodically; and
(5) Requiring technical staff to include important items such as unsuccessful logins, access to critical system files, changes made to user accounts, etc. in system logs, monitors the systems for any abnormal event manually or automatically, and report the monitoring periodically.
Article 26. Commercial banks should ensure the security of all the application systems by
(1) Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of end-users and IT staff regarding the application security;
(2) Implementing a robust authentication method commensurate with the criticality and sensibility of the application system;
(3) Enforcing segregation of duties and dual control over critical or sensitive functions;
(4) Requiring verification of input or reconciliation of output at critical junctures;
(5) Requiring the input and output of confidential information are handled in a secure manner to prevent theft, tampering, intentional leakage, or inadvertent leakage;
(6) Ensuring system can handle exceptions in a predefined way and provide meaningful message to users when the system is forced to terminate; and
(7) Maintaining audit trail in either paper or electronic format.
(8) Requiring user administrator to monitor and review unsuccessful logins and changes to users accounts.
Article 27. Commercial banks should have a set of policies and procedures controlling the logging of activities in all production systems to support effective auditing, security forensic analysis, and fraud prevention. Logging can be implemented in different layers of software and on different computer and networking equipment, which falls into two broad categories:
(1) Transaction journals. They are generated by application software and database management system, and contain authentication attempts, modification to data, error messages, etc. Transaction journals should be kept according to the national accounting policy.
(2) System logs. They are generated by operating systems, database management system, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and routers, etc., and contain authentication attempts, system events, network events, error messages, etc. System logs should be kept for a period scaled to the risk classification, but no less than one year.
Banks should ensure that sufficient items be included in the logs to facilitate effective internal controls, system troubleshooting, and auditing while taking appropriate measures to ensure time synchronization on all logs. Sufficient disk space should be allocated to prevent logs from being overwritten. System logs should be reviewed for any exception. The review frequency and retention period for transaction logs or database logs should be determined jointly by IT organization and pertinent business lines, and approved by the IT steering committee.
Article 28. Commercial banks should have the capacity to employ encryption technologies to mitigate the risk of losing confidential information in the information systems or during its transmission. Appropriate management processes of the encryption facilities should be put in place to ensure that
(1) Encryption facilities in use should meet national security standards or requirements;
(2) Staff in charge of encryption facilities are well trained and screened;
(3) Encryption strength is adequate to protect the confidentiality of the information; and
(4) Effective and efficient key management procedures, especially key lifecycle management and certificate lifecycle management, are in place.
Article 29. Commercial banks should put in place an effective and efficient system of securing all end-user computing equipment which include desktop personal computers (PCs), portable PCs, teller terminals, automatic teller machines (ATMs), passbook printers, debit or credit card readers, point of sale (POS) terminals, personal digital assistant (PDAs), etc and conduct periodic security checks on all equipments.
Article 30. Commercial banks should put in place a set of policies and procedures to govern the collection, processing, storage, transmission, dissemination, and disposal of customer information.
Article 31. All employees, including contract staff, should be provided with the necessary trainings to fully understand these policies procedures and the consequences of their violation. Commercial banks should adopt a zero tolerance policy against security violation.
Chapter V Application System Development, Testing and Maintenance
Article 32. Commercial banks should have the capability to identify, plan, acquire, develop, test, deploy, maintain, upgrade, and retire information systems. Policies and procedures should be in place to govern the initiation, prioritization, approval, and control of IT projects. Progress reports of major IT projects should be submitted to and reviewed by the IT steering committee periodically. Decisions involving significant change of schedule, change of key personnel, change of vendors, and major expenditures should be included in the progress report.
Article 33. Commercial banks should recognize the risks associated with IT projects, which include the possibilities of incurring various kinds of operational risk, financial losses, and opportunity costs stemming from ineffective project planning or inadequate project management controls of the bank. Therefore, appropriate project management methodologies should be adopted and implemented to control the risks associated with IT projects.
Article 34. Commercial banks should adopt and implement a system development methodology to control the life cycle of Information systems. The typical phases of system life cycle include system analysis, design, development or acquisition, testing, trial run, deployment, maintenance, and retirement. The system development methodology to be used should be commensurate with the size, nature, and complexity of the IT project, and, generally speaking, should facilitate the management of the following risks.
Article 35. Commercial banks should ensure system reliability, integrity, and maintainability by controlling system changes with a set of policies and procedures, which should include the following elements.
(1) Ensure that production systems are separated from development or testing systems;
(2) Separating the duties of managing production systems and managing development or testing systems;
(3) Prohibiting application development and maintenance staff from accessing production system under normal circumstances unless management approval is granted to perform emergency repair, and all emergency repair activities should be recorded and reviewed promptly;
(4) Promoting changes of program or system configuration from development and testing systems to production systems should be jointly approved by IT organization and business departments, properly documented, and reviewed periodically.
Article 36. Commercial banks should have in place a set of policies, standards, and procedures to ensure data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. These policies should be in accordance with data integrity amid IT development procedure.
Article 37. Commercial banks should ensure that Information system problems could be tracked, analyzed, and resolved systematically through an effective problem management process. Problems should be documented, categorized, and indexed. Support services or technical assistance from vendors, if necessary, should also be documented. Contacts and relevant contract information should be made readily available to the employees concerned. Accountability and line of command should be delineated clearly and communicated to all employees concerned, which is of utmost importance to performing emergency repair.
Article 38. Commercial banks should have a set of policies and procedures controlling the process of system upgrade. System upgrade is needed when the hardware reaches its lifespan or runs out of capacity, the underpinning software, namely, operating system, database management system, middleware, has to be upgraded, or the application software has to be upgraded. The system upgrade should be treated as a project and managed by all pertinent project management controls including user acceptance testing.
Chapter VI IT Operations
Article 39. Commercial banks should consider fully the environmental threats (e.g. proximity to natural disaster zones, dangerous or hazardous facilities or busy/major roads) when selecting the locations of their data centers. Physical and environmental controls should be implemented to monitor environmental conditions could affect adversely the operation of information processing facilities. Equipment facilities should be protected from power failures and electrical supply interference.
Article 40. In controlling access by third-party personnel (e.g. service providers) to secured areas, proper approval of access should be enforced and their activities should be closely monitored. It is important that proper screening procedures including verification and background checks, especially for sensitive technology-related jobs, are developed for permanent and temporary technical staff and contractors.
Article 41. Commercial banks should separate IT operations or computer center operations from system development and maintenance to ensure segregation of duties within the IT organization. The commercial banks should document the roles and responsibilities of data center functions.
Article 42. Commercial banks are required to retain transactional records in compliance with the national accounting policy. Procedures and technology are needed to be put in place to ensure the integrity, safekeeping and retrieval requirements of the archived data.
Article 43. Commercial banks should detail operational instructions such as computer operator tasks, job scheduling and execution in the IT operations manual. The IT operations manual should also cover the procedures and requirements for on-site and off-site backup of data and software in both the production and development environments (i.e. frequency, scope and retention periods of back-up).
Article 44. Commercial banks should have in place a problem management and processing system to respond promptly to IT operations incidents, to escalate reported incidents to relevant IT management staff and to record, analyze and keep tracks of all these incidents until rectification of the incidents with root cause analysis completed. A helpdesk function should be set up to provide front-line support to users on all technology-related problems and to direct the problems to relevant IT functions for investigation and resolution.
Article 45. Commercial banks should establish service level agreement and assess the IT service level standard attained.
Article 46. Commercial banks should implement a process to ensure that the performance of application systems is continuously monitored and exceptions are reported in a timely and comprehensive manner. The performance monitoring process should include forecasting capability to enable exceptions to be identified and corrected before they affect system performance.
Article 47. Commercial banks should carry out capacity plan to cater for business growth and transaction increases due to changes of economic conditions. Capacity plan should be extended to cover back-up systems and related facilities in addition to the production environment.
Article 48. Commercial banks should ensure the continued availability of technology related services with timely maintenance and appropriate system upgrades. Proper record keeping (including suspected and actual faults and preventive and corrective maintenance records) is necessary for effective facility and equipment maintenance.
Article 49. Commercial banks should have an effective change management process in place to ensure integrity and reliability of the production environment. Commercial banks should develop a formal change management process.
Chapter VII Business Continuity Management
Article 50. Commercial banks should have in place appropriate arrangements, having regard to the nature, scale and complexity of its business, to ensure that it can continue to function and meet its regulatory obligations in the event of an unforeseen interruption. These arrangements should be regularly updated and tested to ensure their effectiveness.
Article 51. Commercial banks should consider the likelihood and impact of a disruption to the continuity of its operation from unexpected events. This should include assessing the disruptions to which it is particularly susceptible including but not limited to:
(1) Loss of failure of internal and external resources (such as people, systems and other assets);
(2) The loss or corruption of its information; and
(3) External events (such as war, earthquake, typhoon, etc).
Article 52. Commercial bank should act to reduce both the likelihood of disruptions (including system resilience and dual processing); and the impact of disruptions (including by contingency arrangements and insurance).
Article 53. Commercial bank should document its strategy for maintaining continuity of its operations, and its plans for communicating and regularly testing the adequacy and effectiveness of this strategy. Commercial bank should establish:
(1) Formal business continuity plans that outline arrangements to reduce the impact of a short, medium and long-term disruption, including:
a) Resource requirements such as people, systems and other assets, and arrangements for obtaining these resources;
b) The recovery priorities for the commercial bank’s operations; and
c) Communication arrangements for internal and external concerned parties (including CBRC, clients and the press);
(2) Escalation and invocation plans that outline the processes for implementing the business continuity plans, together with relevant contact information;
(3) Processes to validate the integrity of information affected by the disruption;
(4) Processes to review and update (1) to (3) following changes to the commercial bank’s operations or risk profile.
Article 54. A final BCP plan and an annual drill result must be signed off by the IT Risk management, or internal auditor and IT Steering Committee.
Chapter VIII Outsourcing
Article 55. Commercial banks cannot contract out its regulatory obligations and should take reasonable care to supervise the discharge of outsourcing functions.
Article 56. Commercial banks should take particular care to manage material outsourcing arrangement (such as outsourcing of data center, IT infrastructure, etc.), and should notify CBRC when it intends to enter into material outsourcing arrangement.
Article 57. Before entering into, or significantly changing, an outsourcing arrangement, the commercial bank should:
(1) Analyze how the arrangement will fit with its organization and reporting structure; business strategy; overall risk profile; and ability to meet its regulatory obligations;
(2) Consider whether the arrangements will allow it to monitor and control its operational risk exposure relating to the outsourcing;
(3) Conduct appropriate due diligence of the service provider’s financial stability, expertise and risk assessment of the service provider, facilities and ability to cover the potential liabilities;
(4) Consider how it will ensure a smooth transition of its operations from its current arrangements to a new or changed outsourcing arrangement (including what will happen on the termination of the contract); and
(5) Consider any concentration risk implications such as the business continuity implications that may arise if a single service provider is used by several firms.
Article 58. In negotiating its contract with a service provider, the commercial bank should have regard to ( but not limited to ):
(1) Reporting and negotiation requirements it may wish to impose on the service provider;
(2) Whether sufficient access will be available to its internal auditors, external auditors and banking regulators;
(3) Information ownership rights, confidentiality agreements and Firewalls to protect client and other information (including arrangements at the termination of contract);
(4) The adequacy of any guarantees and indemnities;
(5) The extent to which the service provider must comply with the commercial bank’s polices and procedures covering IT Risk;
(6) The extent to which the service provider will provide business continuity for outsourced operations, and whether exclusive access to its resources is agreed;
(7) The need for continued availability of software following difficulty at a third party supplier;
(8) The processes for making changes to the outsourcing arrangement and the conditions under which the commercial bank or service provider can choose to change or terminate the outsourcing arrangement, such as where there is:
a) A change of ownership or control of the service provider or commercial bank; or
b) Significant change in the business operations of the service provider or commercial bank; or
c) Inadequate provision of services that may lead to the commercial bank being unable to meet its regulatory obligations.
Article 59. In implementing a relationship management framework, and drafting the service level agreement with the service provider, the commercial bank should have regarded to (but not limited to):
(1) The identification of qualitative and quantitative performance targets to assess the adequacy of service provision, to both the commercial bank and its clients, where appropriate;
(2) The evaluation of performance through service delivery reports and periodic self assessment and independent review by internal or external auditors; and
(3) Remediation action and escalation process for dealing with inadequate performance.
Article 60. The commercial bank should enhance IT related outsourcing management, in place following (not limited to ) measures to ensure data security of sensitive information such as customer information:
(1) Effectively separated from other customer information of the service provider;
(2) The related staff of service provider should be authorized on “need to know” and “minimum authorization” basis;
(3) Ensure service provider guarantee its staff for meeting the confidential requests;
(4) All outsourcing arrangements related to customer information should be identified as material outsourcing arrangements and the customers should be notified;
(5) Strictly monitor re-outsourcing actions of the service provider, and implement adequate control measures to ensure information security of the bank;
(6) Ensure all related sensitive information be refunded or deleted from the service provider’s storage when terminating the outsourcing arrangement.
Article 61. The commercial bank should ensure that it has appropriate contingency in the event of a significant loss of services from the service provider. Particular issues to consider include a significant loss of resources, turnover of key staff, or financial failure of, the service provider, and unexpected termination of the outsourcing agreement.
Article 62. All outsourcing contracts must be reviewed or signed off by IT Risk management, internal IT auditors, legal department and IT Steering Committee. There should be a process to periodically review and refine the service level agreements.
Chapter IX Internal Audit
Article 63. Depending on the nature, scale and complexity of its business, it may be appropriate for the commercial banks to delegate much of the task of monitoring the appropriateness and effectiveness of its systems and controls to an internal audit function. An internal audit function should be adequately resourced and staffed by competent individuals, be independent of the day-to-day activities of the commercial bank and have appropriate access to the bank’s records.
Article 64. The responsibilities of the internal IT audit function are:
(1) To establish, implement and maintain an audit plan to examine and evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of the bank’s systems and internal control mechanisms and arrangements;
(2) To issue recommendations based on the result of work carried out in accordance with 1;
(3) To verify compliance with those recommendations;
(4) To carry out special audit on information technology. The term “special audit” of information technology refers to the investigation, analysis and assessment on the security incidents of the information system, or the audit performed on a special subject based on IT risk assessment result as deemed necessary by the audit department.
Article 65. Based on the nature, scale and complexity of its business, deployment of information technology and IT risk assessment, commercial banks could determine the scope and frequency of IT internal audit. However, a comprehensive IT internal audit shall be performed at a minimum once every 3 years.
Article 66. Commercial banks should engage its internal audit department and IT Risk management department when implementing system development of significant size and scale to ensure it meets the IT Risk standards of the Commercial banks.
Chapter X External Audit
Article 67. The external information technology audit of commercial banks can be carried out by certified service providers in accordance with laws, rules and regulations.
Article 68. The commercial bank should ensure IT audit service provider to review and examine bank’s hardware, software, documentation and data to identify IT risk when they are commissioned to perform the audit. Vital commercial and technical information which is protected by national laws and regulations should not be reviewed.
Article 69. Commercial bank should communicate with the service provider in depth before the audit to determine audit scope, and should not withhold the truth or do not corporate with the service provider intentionally.
Article 70. CBRC and its local offices could designate certified service providers to carry out IT audit or related review on commercial banks when needed. When carrying out audit on commercial banks, as commissioned or authorized by CBRC or its local offices, the service providers shall present the letter of authority, and carry out the audit in accordance to the scope prescribed in the letter of authority.
Article 71. Once the IT audit report produced by the service providers is reviewed and approved by CBRC or its local offices, the report will have the same legal status as if it is produced by the CBRC itself. Commercial banks should come up with a correction action plan prescribed in the report and implement the corrective actions according to the timeframe.
Article 72. Commercial banks should ensure the service providers to strictly comply with laws and regulations to keep confidential and data security of any commercial secrets and private information learnt and IT risk information when conducting the audit. The service provider should not modify copy or take away any documents provided by the commercial banks.
Chapter XI Supplementary Provisions
Article 73. Commercial banks with no board of directors should have their operating decision-making bodies perform the responsibilities of the board with regard to IT risk management specified herein.
Article 74. The China Banking Regulatory Commission supervises and regulates the IT risk management of commercial banks under its authority by law.
Article 75. The power of interpretation and modification of the Guidelines shall rest with the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
Article 76. The Guidelines shall become effective as of the date of its issuance and the former Guidelines on the Risk Management of Banking Institutions’ Information Systems shall be revoked at the same time.
