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Business continuity arrangements / disaster recovery

Organisations will have in systems and technologies in place that are intended to reduce the likelihood of operational downtime, prevent data loss, and to provide business continuity in the event of equipment failure, scheduled maintenance or loss of an operational data centre.

The equipment used for these purposes is likely to contain components and data set out in Table 2. In considering whether such systems contain remote gambling equipment, the Commission draws a distinction between equipment used to store a backup of operational data for a gambling system and equipment that is used as a standby or disaster recovery system.

The Commission defines standby and disaster recovery equipment as equipment that the operator intends to use in, or as a replacement for, the ‘live’ system in the event that the equipment normally used is unavailable. Standby and disaster recovery equipment is, therefore, intended to be used in the provision of facilities for gambling and any such equipment used to deploy the components identified in Table 2 would be remote gambling equipment, which if sited in Great Britain would require the operator to hold the appropriate remote gambling licence from the Commission for the activities for which they will be using the equipment.

For example, an operator, which does not provide facilities for gambling to consumers in Britain nor have its primary remote gambling equipment in Britain does not require a licence from the Commission. But if that operator chooses to have a disaster recovery facility in Great Britain, which would become its live gaming system in the event that its primary remote gambling equipment became unavailable, that disaster recovery facility is equipment intended to be used in the provision of facilities for gambling and the operator would therefore require a remote operating licence.

The Commission has also considered whether equipment that stores back-up data for gambling systems is remote gambling equipment. We define equipment used to store back-up data as equipment that holds a copy of operational data but which will not itself be used as part of the 'live' gambling system. The data will instead be restored onto 'live', standby or disaster recovery equipment. We would not normally consider such equipment to be "used in the provision of facilities for gambling".

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