Coronavirus / COVID-19 Statement

19th March 2020

Opendium would like to provide reassurance to our customers regarding our ability to continue to operate during the ongoing Coronovirus pandemic. To this end, please read this statement from the directors outlining the steps we are taking to maintain operations.  This statement is also available in PDF format.

As I'm sure you are aware, the situation is very fluid, with government advice changing on a day to day basis. We will continue to monitor the situation and publish an updated statement if we are forced to make changes. Please follow us on social media to ensure that you don't miss any further communications, which we will publish on our blog and through social networking at the following web addresses:

Opendium Blog: https://www.opendium.com/blogs
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Opendium
Welsh Language Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpendiumCymru
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Opendium/
Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/company/opendium-ltd/

Mitigation of Internal Contamination

Flexible working practices have been baked into Opendium's culture from the start. We are therefore fortunate to already have, and routinely use, systems and processes in place. All of our staff are currently working from home.

We have technical and managerial staff based in both the South West of England, and in South Wales, giving us a good separation in terms of both geography and governmental policy as the effects and progress of the virus vary from region to region.

Opendium has instigated policies to prevent the spread of the virus within the business:

• All Opendium staff will work from home.

• No Opendium staff will travel between the South West of England and South Wales for business purposes. If any such travel is undertaken for non-business purposes, staff have been asked to inform the directors.

• Within each region, staff will not meet in person except where the directors determine it to be required by exceptional circumstances.

Mitigation of External Contamination

Most of our work is routinely carried out remotely under normal circumstances. However, from time to time we do make site visits.

In order to prevent the spread of the virus to or from our staff, site visits will no longer be undertaken, except where the directors determine it to be required by exceptional circumstances.

Please note that due to data protection law, if we have not received a signed and up to date data processing agreement from you we can only provide a very limited level of remote support. If you have not yet signed and returned your latest agreement, please ensure that you do so as soon as possible.

Staffing Levels and Technical Support

As you may be aware, support for using VPNs to allow home users to securely access your network is a feature of Opendium UTM. We would like to announce that VPN support is now also available for free to all Web Gateway customers for the duration of the outbreak. If you need to set up VPNs for any of your home workers, please get in touch with our technical support team on support@opendium.com and they will be happy to help.

As many of our customers are having to rapidly adapt to remote working, our support team are very busy helping with VPNs, video conferencing, remote telephone connections, etc. We think they are doing an excellent job of keeping on top of this unusually high demand, but please bear with us if we aren't able to answer your support tickets as quickly as you're used to. Feel free to get in touch if you need help with anything.

Although there is clearly an elevated risk of sickness, the steps outlined in this document are intended to protect against our staffing levels from falling too low at any point over the course of the outbreak. Going forward, we anticipate demand for our support team to tail off over the coming days and weeks and do not have any concerns regarding our ability to support our customers on an ongoing basis.

Closing

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch.

 

- Harry Mills (Managing Director) and Steve Hill (Technical Director)