| Professional association | |
| “We are experienced in identifying critical points of failure and developing appropriate solutions and strategies to ensure continuity of an organisation. This includes at a technological as well as organisational level” | 
Renaissance Contingency Services Ltd Denis Woods, director |
| Renaissance is the leading provider of Continuity Planning Services in Ireland.The Renaissance team is the most experienced in all aspects of business continuity.
The company has provided continuity planning services to its clients since 1987, and has developed in excess of three hundred continuity plans for organisations in multiple business sectors in Ireland, UK, Mainland Europe, Eastern Europe, the US and as far away as China. Renaissance has experience in delivering business continuity planning services to state, semi state, financial, commercial and industrial organisations. The Renaissance client list is a who’s who of Irish and international business and organisations. We are experienced in identifying critical points of failure and developing appropriate solutions and strategies to ensure continuity of an organisation. This includes at a technological level, as well as at an organisational level. Renaissance works with the client to develop and implement appropriate strategies for our clients. Our experience means that our clients benefit from many years and our knowledge of varied recovery and resilience approaches. Renaissance works to the international standards for business continuity ISO 22301. Each of our business continuity planning (BCP) consultant is a member of the Business Continuity Institute. This is the de facto professional body for Continuity Practitioners on this side of the Atlantic. Each BCP Consultant is also a member of the Emergency Planning Society. This is a society of individuals involved in aspects of business continuity, crisis management and emergency planning. |
|
| Clear policies | |
| “We work with organisations to protect and secure their data and business critical applications and technologies. We help them determine where their data is, what their critical services are and prioritise recovery” | 
Trilogy Technologies John Casey, group sales director |
| With the implementation of GDPR only 18 months away, organisations must implement appropriate security measures to protect personal data and have a clear data protection policy.Irish businesses now need to incorporate these requirements into the design of their BC & DR solutions. Whereas security of data is core to the design of any such system, classification of personal data, storage and accessibility of that data is essential for the ability of the business to respond to reporting requirements of GDPR in the event of a breach.
When choosing a suitable service, companies should deal with a reputable and experienced organisation who can help secure and protect their digital assets. This begins with defining the data which requires protection and designing a service which can protect and retrieve that data in the event of a data breach or service disruption. This can be a Backup as a Service (BaaS) which protects data or combined with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to also protect services. This helps ensure business continuity by minimising downtime and disruption to customers and employees while ensuring compliance with GDPR. Trilogy Technologies works with organisations to protect and secure their data and business critical applications and technologies. We help them determine where their data is, what their critical services are and prioritise recovery. GDPR requirements firmly put the ability to retrieve data under the spotlight and clearly point to online backup systems as being the essential solution. Data access and retrieval must be easy, as tape has become impractical. BaaS from Trilogy enables companies to reduce the risk of data loss, lower compliance costs and improve data governance. Offered with a managed service, should a breach occur, the service team will respond and help with data recovery. More comprehensive full DR services will provide a business with a customised recovery plan meeting both compliance and continuity needs.
|
|
| Plenty of time? | |
| “Far too many companies are holding on to data that they do not need which has the dual disadvantages of expensive storage, and also the time and effort to properly manage and protect” |  Asystec Michael Spillane, applications specialist |
| Surprisingly, even with all the talks and events circulating with regard to the ‘looming’ GDPR legislation, a lot of companies that we talk to have no plans in place to address the strict regulations. Even more surprising is that we still hear “what’s that?” when we mention the all-encompassing data regulations. Another common we hear is ‘25 May 2018 is ages away, sure we have plenty of time’. The truth is that GDPR is already enacted and with just 18 months to comply it is now we need to get our house in order, not 6 months before the fines start kicking in.Unstructured data has always been difficult to track and monitor, never more so than in today’s world, where we would rather buy more storage than to even attempt to sort the nightmare that is unstructured data. To quote the Parkinson’s Law corollary, “Data expands to fill the space available for storage”. In my opinion, one of the first steps to take should be to delete data that is no longer relevant or required. If you don’t have it, you don’t need to worry about it. Far too many companies are holding on to data that they do not need which has the dual disadvantages of expensive storage, and also the time and effort to properly manage and protect. We can help identify and ‘prune’ this data from your environment.
For data that is required to be kept, it is imperative that is managed correctly. Having sensitive data, i.e. personal data, PCI data, HIPPA data etc., is not the problem in itself, but can you tell where this data resides on your repositories? Can you show an auditor at short notice who has permissions to access this data and furthermore who has accessed this data? Can you answer the upcoming SARs (Subject Access Requests) which are coming as part of GDPR? If the answer to any of these questions is no, be concerned. The time to start implementing solutions is now, if you have not already started. Asystec have vast experience in implementing data solutions and have a dedicated data governance team.
|
|
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers