Business Continuity Plan

In our more than 14 years of business, we’ve weathered the storms of COVID pandemic, the Year 2008-09 financial crisis and the recession that followed, city/state level curfew, internet outage because of curfew and fire in our office, which had touched our regular office life badly, and throughout this journey, our mission of Serving People, be it our employees, our customers and our partners, remained our top priority. 

All these unfortunate events taught us that ‘it’s never too late’ to kick-start the work on Business Continuity Plan. Also, we have always kept on updating our learning from the events, which has helped us so far to remain better positioned to recover from the business interruption, financial impact, and loss of life that a natural disaster or man-made event may cause.

Having a pre-defined and well-documented business continuity plan has helped us to clearly communicate how our business will respond during such an unfortunate event — and indeed, is one of the best investments our company has made.

The intent of sharing our readiness in the form of a Business Continuity Plan is to provide assurance to our existing and prospective clients that Multidots is enabled to respond and ready to recover from a disruption.

Risk Analysis

By conducting a comprehensive risk analysis, we aim to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities that allow Multidots to implement proactive measures to mitigate their impact. Below are some of the key risks that we aim to address to ensure our business continuity plan:

• Establish and implement robust security measures to protect against data breaches and unauthorized access, including strong access controls, encryption protocols, and regular security audits.
• Implement redundant systems and backups to ensure data availability and minimize downtime in the event of service outages or hardware failures.
• Develop and test a comprehensive disaster recovery plan that outlines procedures for restoring operations, recovering data, and minimizing the impact of disruptions.
• Establish clear communication channels with clients, stakeholders, and employees during emergency situations, including alternative means of communication in case of network or service failures.
• Regularly review and update the business continuity plan to address emerging threats, technological advancements, and changes in the business environment.

Backup

Be it Project, Resource or Internet backups – We Are Ready!

• As per our standard practice, we keep up to 15% of engineers on the bench. While on the bench, we utilize them for internal tools, training and research work.  We allocate these resources to live projects in case of an emergency.
• All the project managers & technical leaders are closely connected with the internal weekly process meeting. In case of a need for a resource, they can easily sync up with each other.
• We are confident in handling up to 15% of team fluctuation. In the case of greater impact, where team fluctuation reaches more than 15%, our first preference is to talk to our other ongoing projects/customers to understand their priority and check if we can release resources and serve the urgency of other projects. 
• In the worst-case scenario, if the team fluctuation is >15%, that is a scenario where we will come back to you to find alternate solutions. We have trusted strategic partnerships with other small but skilled development agencies in India, and we are prepared to lease experienced developers from such companies with short notice.
• Being a WordPress agency, we have all our developers trained to follow our best practices, including development workflow, coding standards, and advanced WordPress knowledge. Thus, our developers are easily able to pick up the new project in between with a quick Business Logic knowledge transfer.
• Daily scrum meetings are in our blood. When working in a team,  each person in the team is aware of the latest status of the project. In the scenario when a Project Manager is unable to work, a Team Leader or Technical Analyst or other Project Manager (we have a team of 6 project managers) can take over the project in case of urgency. Daily scrum meetings allow another developer to pick up a team-mate’s task in case of short-term unavailability of a developer.

Internet

• All our global workforce has high-end – stable internet connectivity. Hence we face negligent to minimal work disruptions due to internet connectivity. In addition, Internet connectivity and Electricity in Large/Mega/Metro cities have been most stable and in their best phase for the last 5+ years in India, and fortunately, our majority of team members are located in large cities hence, internet connectivity has not been a concern.
• Also, all of the team members have a backup option of 5G cellular connectivity in case their main broadband network is down. 

Data Security & Protection

As a dynamic & trusted WordPress VIP Agency, our processes are fully derived to be compliant, and we take ownership to maintain the safety & security of your valuable data. Integrity is our fundamental value and makes up the core of our corporate philosophy, keeping us committed to centre our engagement around this approach.

Data Security is critically important to us, and we believe, it is important for our clients to understand how well-equipped we are.  

All our servers are hosted on the cloud and fully secure with 

• Advanced Cloud DDoS Protection
• Redundant cloud backups 

Server Connectivity: 

• All staging servers can be managed through VPN only 
• VPN connection rights are given only to authorized Dots

Data Backup and Recovery

At Multidots, for most of our activities, we utilize cloud base applications, which take care of data backup and recovery.  For example, we use enterprise-grade tools like Slack, Google Workspace, Basecamp, Github etc.

For our WordPress development and staging environments, we utilize trusted hosting providers like WordPress VIP Hosting, Managed hosting providers like WPEngine, Kinsta, Pagely or SiteGround, and our own VPS at Akamai. 

We take automatic backups on a daily and weekly basis for our staging and development servers environment. We can easily recover data from server backup in the event of urgent needs. 

Continuous Monitoring

Continuous monitoring is a crucial component of a robust business continuity plan. Through continuous monitoring, Multidots can proactively detect and respond to any deviations, anomalies, or potential risks that may impact business operations. 

Below are some of the key activities that we follow to monitor and take necessary actions continuously:

• Conduct regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing to identify weaknesses and potential entry points for attackers.
• Installed Endpoint Detection software for each employee’s work machine to ensure real-time security. 
• Perform a cyber security survey each quarter to verify each employee’s work machines are configured with our defined security standards. 
• Regularly review and analyze system logs, security event logs, and network traffic for our development and staging environments to identify potential threats, anomalies, and security breaches.
• Provide training and awareness programs to employees to educate them about the importance of continuous monitoring, their roles and responsibilities, and the proper handling of security incidents.

Tools

Our process/tools are designed to support remote work.  For Project Collaboration, we use Basecamp or Teamwork, which are on the cloud. It is easy to assign access to the new developer. Our Development workflow is integrated with Github CI/CD workflow, and our staging servers are in the cloud. Thus, this can be assigned easily with the right permissions. 

Below are the tools we actively utilize to keep track of all project-related conversations: 

• Slack – http://slack.com/ –  As per our process, for all running projects we create a project-specific channel i.e. “prj-<project_name>”. We also invite our Clients on the same Slack channel. This way, all the project-related conversation stays synced. 
• Basecamp – https://basecamp.com/ – PMS to document/collaborate all project-related communication.
• Teamwork – http://teamwork.com/ –  For Internal Task Management and Issue Tracking for all the projects. So any new developer can ramp up. 
• Zoom – https://zoom.us/ – Realtime Video Conferencing
• Dialpad – https://dialpad.com/ –  For Leaders/Project Manager Direct Phone support
• Github – https://github.com/ – Project Source code and Version Control Management
• GSuit – https://gsuite.google.com/ – At Multidots, we use Google GSuit for our needs, like Email, Google Documents, which are easily available to our team without any downtime.  

Communication Plan:

Effective communication is vital during a crisis to ensure a coordinated response and keep all stakeholders informed. Our communication plan is designed to enable clear and timely dissemination of information. Key elements of our plan include:

• Communication Channels: Establishing primary and secondary communication channels for different scenarios, such as email, text messages, phone calls, and dedicated communication platforms. Ensure redundancy and alternative methods in case of infrastructure disruptions.
• Contact Lists: Maintaining up-to-date contact lists of employees, clients, vendors, and relevant authorities. Include primary and backup contact information, along with roles and responsibilities.
• Crisis Communication Team: Forming a dedicated team responsible for managing communication during a crisis. Clearly define roles and responsibilities within the team and establish protocols for decision-making and message dissemination.
• Regular Updates: Implementing a schedule for regular updates to all stakeholders throughout the crisis, including status updates, recovery progress, and any changes in plans or timelines.

Employee Safety and Well-being:

The safety and well-being of our employees are of paramount importance. Our commitment to their welfare is reflected in the following measures:

• Remote Work Arrangements: We are a 100% remote company. We have established policies, infrastructure, guidelines, and access to necessary tools & resources, which enable our employees to maintain productivity and work efficiently in the home-office environment.
• Employee Assistance Program: Offering an Employee Assistance Program to provide counselling services, mental health support, and resources for employees and their families during challenging times.
• Wellness Check-ins: Implementing regular check-ins with employees to assess their well-being, address concerns, and provide the necessary support. Encourage open communication and establish channels for reporting any well-being issues.
• Co-working Space: All our employees are equipped with Mac-Book Air and receive financial support to operate from Co-Working Space. In the event when employees are unable to operate from Home-Office, they can easily shift to a co-working space. 

Without a doubt, our greatest common achievement is how we have all reacted in challenging times. Dots, clients, partners, vendors, and support staff have all contributed tremendously to keeping our operations running.

Our Business Continuity Plan underscores our commitment to maintaining the uninterrupted operation and resilience of our company. By proactively identifying risks, implementing preventive measures, and establishing comprehensive response strategies, we aim to minimize the impact of potential disruptions. We understand the criticality of our services to our clients, and through regular testing, training, and ongoing updates, we will continuously improve our preparedness and ability to adapt to changing circumstances. With this plan in place, we can confidently navigate any crisis, safeguard our employees, protect our valuable data, and continue to deliver exceptional services to our clients.