ADVANCE NOTICE of the next Council Cyber Defence Activity Weekend December 2019 and January 2020

Dear colleagues,

ICT will be conducting our scheduled cyber-defence activities on the following dates.  This is to ensure that our cyber-defence solutions are kept up-to-date to protect council information and data  against the ever evolving posed by cyber-based attacks. 

We appreciate that this can sometimes be inconvenient to any planned weekend work you may have, notwithstanding those council teams that specifically work over the weekend, but we are sure you will understand the need to secure and protect the councils’ information and data in this way.

With this in mind, and in order to carry out essential and critical maintenance to the council’s cyber defence solutions, please be aware that access to servers and services may be disrupted on:

• Sunday 15^th December 2019, all day, widespread ICT disruption
• Sunday 22nd December from 8am, SAP systems, minor email delays
• Sunday 19^th January 2020, all day, widespread ICT disruption
• Sunday 26^th  January  from 8am, SAP systems, minor email delays  
• Widespread ICT Disruption
• Staff, Members, partners & other third parties working with GCC ICT services may not be able to login at this time and users working outside the network may experience intermittent remote connectivity issues when trying to connect.
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• Periods when staff will experience general PC issues such as  logging on, logging off, printing, opening and saving document, accessing applications – this while dependent solutions are patched and rebooted
• GCC Email via outlook will be affected - this will be minimal, users should be able to work without significant disruption
• GCC Email via remote devices (e.g. BlackBerry) will be available but new emails to be sent or received will be delayed
• SAP, ERIC, Pensions, Capita ONE/Liquid Logic, Coldharbour etc. will be affected.
• Access to systems hosted outside of the GCC data network (GCC website, TALIS, etc.) will be mostly unaffected, although any links to services internally hosted within the GCC will be unavailable, e.g. Online forms (e.g. Request a Copy Certificate, Book a van visit to a Household Recycling Centre) will be unavailable.
• The People’s Network and library printing will be available to the public
• GCC printing will be disruptedTelephony
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• GCC ‘Cisco’ VoIP phones – will be unaffected
• GCC non VoIP Desk phones managed by the ICT Service will unaffected
• Solidus, out of hours messages will be disrupted, business/process owners should request alternate greetings are activated where applicable
• CISCO UNITY Voicemail system

• IVR, Helplines – will be disrupted
• Voicemail will be disrupted, this could cause new recordings to be truncated 
• SAP and Minor Emails Delays
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• SAP systems will be affected
• GCC Email via outlook will be affected - this will be minimal, users should be able to work without significant disruption
• GCC Email via remote devices (BlackBerrys and Good) will be available but new emails to be sent or received will be delayed      
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• Below is a link to the planned dates for upcoming ICT changes https://staffnet.gloucestershire.gov.uk/internal-services/the-ict-service/other-ict-services/ict-service-status/
• We apologise for the loss of service that this essential council cyber defence activity will cause.
• Please inform any key users of your systems who would be impacted by this weekend activity and consider implementing your business continuity arrangements where applicable. 
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