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    Ex Libris Statement Regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19) 1.7

    Ex Libris Statement Regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19)

    Updated April 05, 2020

     

    We continue to monitor the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and its global impact. Ex Libris is committed to providing awareness and transparency to our customers, employees, and partners regarding our status and the actions that we are taking. Our business continues to be fully operational, with no disruption to our services and systems. 

     

    Ex Libris’ Business Continuity Management (BCM) team has activated our well-established business continuity program to mitigate potential disruptions to our business. The Business Continuity Plan includes a focus on:

    • The health and safety of our customers and employees
    • The continuity of our services
    • Supporting our customers and their users
    • Compliance with governmental regulations and public health guidance

     

    Customer and employee health and safety:

    • We have updated our business travel guidelines, with air travel strictly limited. We are holding virtual meetings rather than traveling in order to stay connected with customers, colleagues and partners.
    • We have implemented a company-wide work from home policy, and have restricted access to our facilities, including restriction of visitors.  We are closely monitoring guidelines from the government and health officials in the local communities where our employees and customers live and work. 
    • We are carefully reviewing our event calendar as well as our presence at industry events in the coming months, postponing events as necessary. These are often difficult decisions, but maintaining our commitment to the health and well-being of our customers and employees remains our top priority.

     

    Business continuity:

    • We have implemented daily Business Continuity Team meetings to ensure that updates and changes are communicated to customers, partners, and employees.
    • Ex Libris has a robust program in place to enable our workforce to work remotely:
      • Our connectivity and workforce productivity tools have been thoroughly tested to ensure that employees have secure and continuous access to our systems, data, and team members.
      • All Ex Libris employees are able to connect remotely to our business systems as well as maintain internal and external communications.
      • The Ex Libris 24x7 Hub (Network Operation Center / Security Operation Center) continues to work 24x7.
    • As a global company, our critical business functions, including technical support and cloud operations, are distributed in regions around the world. We also have a cloud-based infrastructure that provides redundancy across geographies and across our global network. This global model helps ensure consistent, world-class customer support and service levels for our customers.
    • We have geographically dispersed data centers and have taken prudent steps to mitigate any disruption in the supply of repair parts and supplies. As an organization that is already ISO 22301 (Business Continuity Planning) certified, we have the necessary processes in place to ensure that our cloud services will continue uninterrupted.
    • We have established an updated communications policy with our data center vendors and are in touch with them daily. As a reminder, you can always check the system status page for the latest information on the availability of all multitenant instances.
    • The vast majority of our professional services, especially implementation services, are handled remotely without the need to travel to customer sites. Due to the suspension of non-essential travel plans, some customer meetings originally planned to take place onsite may be handled by video or teleconference.
    • We continue to monitor and be in touch with our global suppliers & partners
      • We continue to be in touch with all of our partners and suppliers to ensure that our joint solutions and services run smoothly to the benefit of our customers.
      • We are making sure that both our internal and external systems (such as our data centers) continue to run smoothly.
    • We continuously monitor our vendors’ COVID-19 statements. While some of vendors provide security advisories directly upon request, several of our data centers and vendors have published their own COVID-19 statements, which you can access at the links below:

    Data Centers

    o   Equinix – https://www.equinix.com/lp/equinix-coronavirus-statement-to-customers-and-partners/

    o   Cyxtera – https://www.cyxtera.com/covid-19-statement-for-customers-and-partners

    o   Digital Realty  – https://www.digitalrealty.com/coronavirus-statement

    Vendors

    o   Cisco – https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/covid19/letter-to-customers-partners.html

    o   Palo Alto Networks – https://blog.paloaltonetworks.com/2020/03/palo-alto-networks-statement-regarding-covid-19-coronavirus/

    o   Red Hat – https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-red-hat-doing-address-coronavirus-covid-19

    o   Oracle – https://www.oracle.com/corporate/covid-19.html

    o   A10 Networks – https://www.a10networks.com/blog/a10networks-operations-update-for-covid19-pandemic/

    o   Imperva -https://www.imperva.com/blog/a-message-from-our-ceo/

    o   AWS - https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to-help-employees-communities-and-customers-affected-by-covid-19

     

     

    Supporting our customers and end users:

    • We have launched a series of new initiatives to support our customers and the wider community. These initiatives  promote library resource sharing, student engagement, online learning, and COVID-19-focused research news and funding. Information regarding our new initiatives is available here, and will continue to be updated as relevant.
    • We have increased channels of internal communication, and as always, prioritize communication with you, our customers. We will continue to be responsive, work hard to provide excellent service, and stay connected to you during this challenging time.
    • We are creating resources to help our customers as they transition to remote learning/online classes and we will offer live webinars to discuss best practices.
    • We are continuing to create programs aimed at bridging gaps for our customers and users as they navigate the current unprecedented challenges.
    • We have been conducting webinar sessions on best practices for each Ex Libris solution during this situation. All webinars were recorded and are available together with documentation, presentations including tips and free resources, and a Q&A for each product, at this link: https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Cross_Product/Best_Practices_for_the_Ex_Libris_Community_During_COVID-19

     

    Ex Libris will continue to closely monitor the situation and is prepared to make real-time decisions to implement other measures that support our employees and customers as needed. If there is anything that we can do to support you and your institution, or if you have questions or concerns, please contact your account team or email us at Exlibris-support@proquest.com .

     

    As the situation continues to evolve, we will post updates to our Trust Center https://trust.exlibrisgroup.com and send email notifications as appropriate. The status of our systems is always available in real-time at https://status.exlibrisgroup.com .

     

    We are confident in our ability to limit the impact of COVID-19 to our services because of these preparations. We wish you all good health as we navigate this difficult situation.

     

    Record of Changes

    Type of Information

    Document Data

    Document Title:

    Ex Libris Statement Regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19)

    Document Owner:

    Tomer Shemesh - Ex Libris Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

    Approved by:

    Barak Rozenblat - VP Cloud Services

    Issued:

    Mar 6, 2020

    Updated:

    April 05, 2020

    Revision Control

    Version Number

    Update 

    Update Date

    1.0

    Initial – Tomer S

    March 6, 2020

    1.1

    Updated – Tomer S

    March 13, 2020

    1.2

    Updated – Tomer S

    March 16, 2020

    1.3 Updated – Tomer S March 18, 2020
    1.4 Updated - Tomer S March 22, 2020
    1.5 Updated - Tomer S March 26, 2020
    1.6 Updated - Tomer S March 31, 2020
    1.7 Updated - Tomer S April 05, 2020

     

    Document Distribution and Review

    The document owner will distribute this document to all approvers when it is first created and as changes or updates are made. This document will be reviewed and updated annually or upon written request by an approver or stakeholder. Questions or feedback about this document can be directed to the owner or a listed approver