-Our view is that this is a virus that is relatively new and clearly the type of protection we had did not stop it having an impact on our system," NAB spokesperson Brandon Phillips told ZDNet Australia.
Online services, including Internet banking and share broking, were inaccessible to the NAB's 46,000 online customers from about 8.30am and telephone banking services were also disrupted during the course of the day.
According to Phillips, Internet banking was fully restored at about 5pm, with most other services coming back online within the hour.
Phillips said yesterday's virus attack was the first of its kind on the National. -It's the first time I recall any such [virus] problem," Phillips said, adding that NAB uses Lotus Notes and has therefore been safe from past viruses that propagated via other email systems.
Following Nimda's disrupted of the bank's servers a series of patches and recovery was conducted, according to Phillips. -We acted as quickly as we could to minimise disruption," he added.
-People who were inconvenienced by it [Nimda] had a variety of other channels," Phillips said, pointing out that EFTPOS was available, its 900 branches were open to customers and only a small number of ATMs were temporarily offline.
Post-attack the National now has a formal process of review in place, where steps will be taken to make improvements.
Ironically, the National had recently posted a security message to customers on the opening page of Internet banking, urging them to update their virus protections.
