Natilik takes a broad approach to service continuity and while there is currently no foreseen impact to Natilik’s operation of our services, we wanted to provide some detail regarding our preparedness should the situation change.
Natilik has a comprehensive business continuity program, details of which can be found on our SharePoint Intranet site. Our BCP plan outlines our efforts across a multitude of scenarios to minimise and prevent impact to service. Whilst the current plan does not specifically address response to pandemic, this is being actively investigated and an updated version will be published in due course.
Specific to COVID-19, we will be providing an outline of key preparedness activities to ensure continued service delivery during this event. The three areas of focus during any situation that challenges normal operations are as follows:
• Impact to systems – does the event have a potential impact on the systems used to deliver our services and support our clients?
• Impact to location – are the locations from which we deliver and support services effected and what is our response?
• Impact to people – are we prepared should there be impact to the individuals responsible for delivering service to our clients?
The following provides the high-level summary of the current state in each of these areas, there are more activities that relate to our business continuity efforts which are linked to the ongoing review and update of BCP not included here.
Impact to Systems
First and foremost there are no known impacts to Natilik systems. Heightened awareness is in place for the following areas:
• Service scale and operations – One of the benefits of cloud services are the ability to scale dynamically, including utilisation of our investment in resilience and DR across multiple DC’s and our supply chain. We have seen an increase in the utilisation of remote working and tools such as Webex and Teams and continue to monitor performance closely.
• Supporting systems – A general principle of cloud service operations is remote management and administration. We see no effect to our ability to manage the systems used to support Natilik and our clients and have confirmed adequate capacity for our people to work remotely at scale.
• External systems – We are working with our tier 1 suppliers to ensure that they have adequate levels of preparedness in place and to understand what emergency provisions and processes are to be employed should the situation change.
Impact to Location
Our services are designed to be securely accessible from anywhere, both for normal day-to-day operation and also for remote administration; however, with the recent news of a higher incidence of COVID-19 we wanted to provide specific details around support of the service should our people be constrained to work from home.
• Natilik employs a security first approach to all Natilik services. Each system and service can be securely accessed without direct access to the corporate location.
• Natilik maintains multiple geographic locations with individuals who are capable of delivering and supporting our clients.
People
Natilik have the capability of ensuring continued operations with multiple subject matter experts in each discipline, with geographic diversity being a consideration.
• Employees responsible for managing the service all have access to needed resources to take action from home or the office.
• An on-call rotation allows for sustained support should issues arise and ensures that resources are available should individuals fall ill.
While Natilik puts the safety and well-being of its people at the forefront, our approach to business continuity is expected to allow for uninterrupted service operation should the virus spread significantly.
We will continue to monitor the situation and will publish further updates should the situation change.
