Cyber Crisis and Continuity Readiness for a Mortgage Servicer
Borrower payments kept posting in a simulated loss of the servicing platform, with every decision owner named in advance.
Client name withheld by agreement- Client
- Residential mortgage servicer, 600,000 loans
- Region
- Plano, Texas
- Year
- 2024
- Duration
- 11 weeks
- Scope
- 31 critical processes · 12 key vendors · board simulation
- Practice
- Offensive Security & Resilience
The challenge
What was at stake.
A residential mortgage servicer handles payments, escrow and loss mitigation for 600,000 loans on behalf of investors and government agencies. Its continuity plans assumed a building outage, not the loss of its servicing platform to ransomware.
Missed borrower payments, escrow disbursements or investor remittances carry regulatory, contractual and reputational cost within days. The board wanted to see the plan work before it was needed.
What we did
The approach, step by step.
- 01
Processes ranked by deadline
We analyzed 31 critical processes against the dates they cannot miss, from daily payment posting to monthly investor reporting and tax and insurance disbursements.
- 02
Vendor dependencies tested
Twelve key vendors, including the core servicing platform and payment processors, were reviewed for recovery commitments and contract notice terms.
- 03
Workarounds built and timed
Manual payment posting, escrow disbursement and borrower communication procedures were written and timed with the people who would run them.
- 04
Board simulation
An escalating ransomware scenario took executives and directors through isolation, investor notice, regulator contact and the decision to pay or rebuild.
- 05
Risk register updated
Every gap from the exercise went into the enterprise risk register with an owner, a date and a board reporting line.
Outcomes
What changed, in numbers.
- 31
- critical processes with tested workarounds
- 12
- key vendors reviewed for recovery terms
- 5
- decision gaps closed after the simulation
- 100%
- of investor remittance deadlines met in the exercise
When the simulation got hard, everyone in the room already knew whose decision it was.
Services delivered
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