Online Business Process Continuity & Disaster Recovery

1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 

The purpose of this document is to provide a high-level overview of the Business Continuity (“BC”) measures that are in place specifically related to the critical business functions (touch points) that [Category] has with the PaySpace services. The 3 touch points can be defined as follows:

1.2       

The PaySpace Application

 

1.2.1              The primary application that [Category]’s and users interact with daily;

1.3                    

The Support/Help Centre

 

1.3.1              The telephonic point of contact should [Category] and users need assistance regarding the PaySpace application.

1.4     

The Ticketing System & Help Centre

 

1.4.1              The system used to log and record all queries, questions and assistance relating to the PaySpace Application as well as manage service levels regarding our support turnaround time.

2                              

PAYSPACE APPLICATION

2.1                     

The PaySpace Application is hosted in Microsoft Azure in a computing environment that has been designed with high availability to help ensure a predictable degree of operational continuity during production hours. The PaySpace Application uses various managed services in Microsoft Azure which comes with an availability guarantee of at least 99.95%. Microsoft Azure has several redundancy features at every level of failure, from an individual service to an entire region. PaySpace utilises various of these redundancy features based on the respective service offering being used.

2.2                     

The PaySpace Application utilizes a geographically separate physically located Microsoft Azure data centre for disaster recovery (“DR”) purposes. This environment is a replica of the production environment in terms of architecture and design and resides in a “passive” or “standby” state. The application database is replicated in real-time to the DR environment using the geo-replication feature of Azure SQL Service and therefore has a recovery point objective of a few seconds. The DR environment is tested at least once a year to replicate a disaster and to ensure all core processes are up to date and relevant.

2.3                     

If a disaster is declared, the “standby” environment is activated, and communication is sent to all [Category] informing them of the nature of the incident.

3                              

RECOVERY STRATEGY

3.1                     

Due to the cloud-based nature of the PaySpace Application, there is no impact from a user’s perspective when a disaster is declared. Users access the PaySpace production environment through a URL which will be pointed to the DR environment IP address.

4                              

PLAN TIMELINE

4.1                     

The information below provides the timeline from incident detection and indicates at what time intervals certain actions are initiated:

 

Hour 0

Incident Detection & Severity Classification

Hour 1

Activate Initial Response Team

Hour 2

Activate Recovery Team & Coordinate Tasks

Hour 3

Establish ETA to Potential Restoration of Services

Hour 4

Declare a Disaster:

 

If NO: then Terminate

 

If YES: Mobilize/Prepare Recovery Team & Activate DR Database

Hour 5

Notify [Category] Users;

Hour 6

Activate Website

Hour 7

Validate Core Application Components

Hour 8

Resume Normal Operations

5                              

SUPPORT/HELP CENTRE

5.1                     

Service Provider support desk operations physically reside in Johannesburg, South Africa.

5.2                     

The contact number (+27 87 210 3000) that [Category] and users use to contact Service Provider service desk when assistance is required is a software-based VoIP PBX solution. All calls are routed, by this PBX solution, directly to a support desk consultant’s computer regardless of where they physically reside. This means that Service Provider’s entire support desk team can operate anywhere where there is an internet connection, there is no reliance to operate out of Service Provider’s offices. This gives Service Provider vast flexibility in terms of servicing [Category] telephonically if operations at Service Provider’s head office is disrupted in any way.

6                              

TICKETING SYSTEM AND HELP CENTRE

6.1                     

In addition to being able to contact Service Provider’s support centre telephonically, [Category] and users can create a ticket request on Service Provider’s ticketing system by sending an email to [email protected] or by accessing Service Provider’s online help center through the PaySpace Application. Service Provider’s support centre consultants are alerted of a new ticket and therefore action it accordingly. The ticketing system has built-in escalations processes relating to support timeframes.

6.2                     

Service Provider’s ticketing system is a separate cloud-based solution which means it provides the same flexible accessibility benefits for Service Provider’s support center consultants. Service Provider can service [Category] logged tickets from anywhere.

6.3                     

Service Provider’s ticketing system forms a crucial element to Service Provider’s business function and is the primary fall-back option regarding [Category] assistance in the rare event that Service Provider’s support desk is unavailable telephonically.