On March 11, 2020, the Government ordered a state of emergency in connection with protective measures against the new coronavirus in Hungary, following the declaration of coronavirus as a pandemic (COVID-19) by the World Health Organization.
The management of our company has introduced significant changes in our day-to-day work as from 12. March 2020, after having considered the risks of the spread of coronavirus COVID19 in Hungary and its potential effects on the continuity of the business of Cardinal Ltd. and on the continuation of smooth service to our customers.
From that day on, a major part of our employees was asked to perform their tasks remotely on an experimental basis. Based on the experience gained during the past two days, the management has decided that the rest of the employees will continue its work in form of home office as from March 16, 2020. Until indefinite period of time only a few persons will be on duty at the headquarters of Cardinal Ltd., due to the facility management duties.
We have made substantial arrangements over the past short period to perform our full range of activities within the framework of working from home. With this in mind:
- In addition to the workstations used primarily, additional backup devices were activated and configured.
- We provided all employees with the material properties and technical requirements indispensable for working from home.
- We have set and at several points modified our IT security, data security requirements, as well as our network capabilities for mass remote work, and our protocols for them.
- We conducted several load tests over a few days to ensure that our development and support activities could be maintained smoothly and without loss of time when all workstations were working remotely at the same time.
- We considered special attention to the secure installation of the changing environmental conditions during the teleworking, and to the security awareness of each of our employees (device- and password protection, data security, etc.).
- We temporarily suspended personal meetings with customers. Alternatively, we have switched to using MS Teams and conference calls only. From March 12th the regular weekly project meetings within the company take place in this form.
As a result of the preparations, all our colleagues have secure, remote access to the file and mail servers, as well as the necessary development environments, equivalent to office work. All our phone lines on which our employees maintain daily conversations with partners have been redirected to mobile devices.
Our ticketing system (CCC), which supports the bank-side operation of the use of our CRAFT, Electra and ViCA products, remains the primary communication interface for reporting possible software errors and other malfunctions.
The aim of the significant transformation of our usual way of operation was to ensure that our Company would remain operational even in the event of the spread of the worldwide pandemic, and we would be able to continue to perform our support and development function towards our partners without compromises.
The management has elaborated and announced guidelines for travel conditions, for use of public transportation, as well as the necessary reporting practices in any emergency cases, to maintain the health of our employees and to minimize potential infections.
We expect from the measures presented above formulated thoroughly, that we will continue to serve our partners and business processes and to meet the requirements of the quality work provided so far, especially if the spread of COVID19 becomes more significant.
The management of Cardinal Kft. continuously reviews the changes and news related to the public health situation, the related countrywide measurements declared by the central government and is committed to enforce further severity and safety measures in its operation, if necessary.
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