Today’s blog post focuses on COVID-19 and the steps Afilias is taking at both an international and local level to support the wellness of our staff and communities while meeting our commitments to customers.  

International preparedness

As indicated on March 12 by Ram Mohan, Chief Operating Officer at Afilias, our organisation is taking recommended precautions regarding travel, cleanliness, “social distancing”, and recently moving to “Work From Home” status in several offices.

Offices including Toronto (Canada), Horsham (Philadelphia, USA), Dublin (Ireland) and Melbourne (Australia) have commenced “Work From Home” operations, with senior management advising staff to avoid exposure through social distancing during the pandemic. Other Afilias offices located in lower risk areas may also move into “Work From Home” status as required. 

Afilias’ advanced systems and technologies mean that working from home is a practical option for our teams, without disruption to our 24x7 service to customers.

Afilias supports our registry and registrar clients with redundant resources that help make our services disaster resistant. For example:

1. Redundancy: The Afilias team has about 300 members focused on registry support, which means we have enough experts to maintain redundancy in every critical function.  If some of our staff become ill, there are other experts who can step in to avoid single points of failure.

2. Diversity: The Afilias team is dispersed throughout the world, which reduces our dependency on any one location.

3. Connectivity: The Afilias team can work from home (or nearly anywhere) if needed—every key staff member has secure remote access to the resources they need to support our clients.

Local preparedness

Patrick Donaldson, Country Manager at Afilias Australia explains that systems will not be affected as a result of this unprecedented crisis, and our teams are available via usual means, referring directly to the Business Continuity Plan (BCP):

“Afilias Australia has a Business Continuity Plan in place and our systems are regularly tested to ensure our customers have the support they need.”

In February 2020 Afilias Australia was recertified with our pre-existing ISO standards, ISO22301 Business Continuity Management Standard, and ISO27001 Information Security Standard. This annual audit took place to ensure that we are equipped for situations such as the current pandemic. 

On a global level, Afilias’ main priority is to keep employees safe while ensuring continuity of service for customers. Our “Work From Home” policy on both an international and local scale ensures our services continue to be delivered with high levels of redundancy, diversity and connectivity. 

Afilias encourages organisations and individuals alike to take the appropriate precautions in their designated areas to ensure that everyone remains as safe and well as possible.