With new security threats emerging almost daily, Citizens Financial Group, of Providence, R.I., has expanded its relationship with EMC, of Hopkinton, Mass., to safeguard customer information.

The deal gives Citizens an additional 30 terabytes of EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage and EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) software. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"We take the security of our customers' data very seriously," said Kenneth Trudel, a Citizens vice president. "Accurate and accessible information is key to protecting our customers' hard-earned deposits."

In addition, Citizens recently bought Mellon's retail, small business and certain middle-market businesses and needed more storage. Citizens is consolidating information about its new customers in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey onto its EMC equipment.

The deal comes on the same day that criminals compromised security at a MidWest bank and posted screenshots of what appeared to be the institution's database.

Citizens, one the nation's 20 largest commercial banks, chose EMC after a year-long analysis.

The bank will work with EMC Global Services consultants to craft a business continuity plan. The bank will use EMC SRDF's 'Multi-Hop' capability to mirror data from its primary data center to two alternate locations across a 50-mile area.

EMC Symmetrix systems in each location will be linked via high-speed Fibre Channel and Internet protocol networks. In an outage, Citizens will be able to recover data in seconds. EMC also will also provided training to Citizens' IT staff.

The customer win is good news for EMC, which recently posted its third consecutive quarterly loss and is fighting with Hitachi over patents.

Shares of EMC were off 0.53, or nearly 5 percent, to 10.26 at midday. In the last 52 weeks, the issue has ranged from 9.66 to 45.1.