Below is a list of Frequently Asked Questions of Ascender’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP).

Ascender is monitoring the current situation closely; various measures have been put in place proactively, and we have also decided to invoke BCP across all our service centres and/or office locations, to ensure that our staff remains healthy and that we can continue to deliver on our commitments.

 

Yes. Please consult your account manager for further details.

We have put systems and security in place to minimise any impact on our business and operations.  Payroll is a very resilient product and service.  We have not seen any negative impact on our revenue or operations and do not anticipate there being so in the future.  We also do not foresee any cessation or partial cessation of our operations, in any of our offices across our business, as we have already implemented systems to minimise the impact of COVID-19.

Ascender has a Business Continuity Plan in place for each service location and the capability to cater to different scenarios to ensure service continuity to our clients across Asia. Pandemics, such as an escalation in the current COVID-19 situation, are categorised under a ‘People Not Available’ scenario, with corresponding response plans in place in the respective BCP’s.

BCP solutions have been activated to avoid service disruption. We have arranged for all our employees to work from home using secured communication rather than travel to the office. International travel restrictions are less likely to significantly impact the type of services delivered to Ascender customers and is assessed as low impact disruption by Ascender Risk Management Committee. Nonetheless, we have had restrictions in place for international travel since the end of January.

Ascender’s most significant suppliers are operators in the IT hosting space that have multiple layers of Disaster Recovery and risk management in place. We are therefore reasonably confident that our ability to deliver will not be adversely impacted by any impact to such third parties either.

Some of the measures that Ascender has implemented to mitigate the Cyber Security risks include, but not limited to:

  • Ascender payroll operations staff are required to use a secure virtual desktop environment while working outside Ascender office premises;
  • Implementation of two-factor authentication for Virtual Private Network (VPN), corporate email and collaborative solutions while accessed from outside Ascender network;
  • Hosted and end-user systems are updated with the most recent security patches;
  • End-user devices protected with:
      • Anti-malware software;
      • Web filtering;
      • Disablement of portable media storage capability;
      • Anti-phishing email protection etc.
  • Security Events and Log monitoring on Corporate IT systems;
  • Ascender staff provided with special teleworking security guidelines and trained about threats of socially engineered attempts to extract information or drive actions etc.