Background
Social Sync relies on secure, stable, and efficient system operations to deliver essential fundraising and data services to our customers. Regular system maintenance is crucial to ensuring continuous performance, security, and compliance with industry standards.
Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to establish a structured framework for performing system maintenance. This ensures minimal disruption to customers, proactive management of security risks, and adherence to regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
Scope
This policy applies to all infrastructure, systems, and services maintained and operated by Social Sync, including cloud-hosted environments and associated third-party providers.
Objectives
The objectives of this policy are to:
Ensure system availability and reliability.
Minimise disruption due to maintenance activities.
Maintain the security and integrity of our systems.
Comply with applicable regulations and standards.
Scheduled Maintenance
Social Sync schedules regular maintenance during periods designed to minimise impact on customers. Scheduled maintenance typically occurs outside peak business hours (e.g., weekends or late-night UK time).
Where scheduled maintenance requires a period of service downtime, Social Sync will endeavour to provide at least 5 working days’ notice to customers.
Customers are notified via email or in-app platform alerts regarding the schedule, scope, and expected impact of planned maintenance activities.
Emergency Maintenance
Emergency maintenance activities may be necessary to address urgent security or operational issues. Social Sync will:
Provide customers with as much notice as reasonably possible.
Clearly communicate the reasons and anticipated impact of emergency maintenance, via email and in-app notifications.
Prioritise minimising disruption to customer operations.
Maintenance Procedures
System maintenance activities include, but are not limited to:
Software updates and patch management.
Security vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure hardware and software upgrades.
Performance optimisation and system tuning.
All maintenance activities adhere to documented procedures and are recorded in system maintenance logs for audit and compliance purposes.
Roles and Responsibilities
- Product Team: Oversees maintenance activities and responsible for planning, scheduling and coordinating the engineering and customer facing support/success teams
Engineering Team: Responsible for planning, scheduling and conducting maintenance activities. Ensures maintenance adheres to security best practices and manages emergency security patches.
Customer Support/Success Team: Responsible for customer communication and support during maintenance windows. Ensures new features are adequately documented in our knowledge base. Prepares launch webinars to introduce major features to customers (including Q+A and advice on best practices to get the most out of any new features).
Record Keeping
Social Sync maintains detailed records of all maintenance activities in our engineering management systems, including:
Date and time of maintenance.
Systems or services affected.
Nature of the maintenance performed.
Personnel responsible for maintenance.
Records are retained in compliance with Social Sync’s data retention policy and applicable regulations.
Policy Review
This policy is reviewed annually and updated as necessary to reflect operational changes, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices. Customers will be notified of any significant changes to this policy.
Revision history
| Version | Date | Description of Changes |
|---|---|---|
| V1 | November 4th, 2024 | Initial Creation |
| V2 | November 6th, 2024 | Publication |
