ESOS What is the Truth?

When the UK administration introduced its ESOS Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme reactions from business people followed a familiar theme.

  • Do nothing it will go away
  • The next Westminster will drop this
  • Another stealth tax. I don’t have time for this
  • Give the problem to admin and tell them to fix it

ecovaro decided to share three facts with you. These are

(1) ESOS is not a government money spinner

(2) all major political parties support it, and

(3) it is a cost-effective way to put money back in your pocket while feeling better about what business pumps into the environment.

Four More ESOS Facts

1. You Cannot Give the Problem to Admin ? Energy is technical. The lead belongs with your operations staff because they understand how your systems work. Some things are best outsourced though. ecovaro is here to help.

2. ESOS is Not Going to Go Away ? A company inside the regulation net must submit its first report by 6 December 2015. Non-compliance risks the following penalties:

  • ?5,000 for not maintaining adequate records
  • ?50,000 for not completing the assessment
  • ?50,000 for making a false or misleading statement

3. The Employee Count is the Annual Average – The employment criteria (unlike balance sheet and turnover) is the monthly average of full and part-time employees taken across the full financial year. The fact you have <250 employees in December 2015 when the first report is due does not necessarily let you off the hook.

4. The 6 December 2014 Report is No Big Deal ? When you think about it the administration is hardly likely to spend years wading through 9,000 detailed company energy plans. It has no authority to comment in any case. All that is required is for a senior director to confirm reading the document, and a lead assessor to agree it complies with the law.

Does this mean that ESOS is a damp squib? We do not think so, although some firms may take the low road. ecovaro believes the financial benefits will carry the process forward, and that the imperative to make the world a better place will do the rest.

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The Future of Cloud Backup and Recovery

We came across a post on Docurated that pulled together thirty-seven suggestions for the top cloud storage mistakes user companies make. Given that cloud storage seems to be the best backup solution for now at least, we decided to turn these ideas around to sense the direction cloud backup and recovery needs to take, if it is still to be relevant in say ten years? time.

Has Cloud Storage Largely Saturated the West?
It probably has. Outside of major corporates who make their own arrangements ? and SME?s that use free services by email providers ? the middle band of companies in Europe and America have found their service providers, although they may have never tested the recovery process, to see if it works.

The new gold rush in the cloud backup and recovery business is, or should be emerging markets in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. There, connectivity is brittler than over here. To be relevant in these fragile, more populous areas our cloud backup and recovery industry need to be more agile and nimble.

? It must provide a simpler service emerging commerce can afford, refresh its user interfaces in third world languages, have more accessible help, and be patient to explain how cloud storage works to newbies. In other words, it must source its call centre operators in the areas it serves.

? It must adapt to local connectivity standards, and stop expecting someone with ADSL broadband to keep up with cloud server networks running at up to 1GBPS compared to their 10MBPS at best. For user sourcing and retention purposes, these new cloud backup and recovery services must be the ones who adapt.

? It must facilitate disaster recovery simulations among its clients in calmer moments when things are going well. Are they backing up the right files, are they updating these, and are their brittle ADSL networks able to cope with their cloud service providers? upload and download speeds?

? It must develop lean and agile systems slim enough to accommodate a micro client starting out, but sufficiently elastic to transfer them seamlessly to big data performance. The Asian, African, South American, and Middle Eastern regions are volume driven, and individual economies of scale are still rare.

? It must not expect its users to know automatically what they need, and be honest to admit that Western solutions may be wrong-sized. Conversion funnels in the new gold rush are bound to be longer. Engagements there depend on trust, not elevator sales letters. Our competition in these countries already works this way.

? It must be honest and admit cloud storage is only part of the solution. To recruit and retain users it must step back to 1983, when Compuserve offered its customers 128k of disc space, and spent an amount of effort explaining how to filter what to put there.

Cloud Storage of Data is Only One Part of the Solution
Governance reports and stock certificates burn just as easily as do servers in a fire. We must not transfer bad habits to exciting new markets. We close this article with the thoughts of John Howie, COO of Cloud Security Alliance, as reported in the Docurated post we mentioned, and these apply across the globe, we believe.
There is no single most important thing to carry forward into the future of cloud backup and recovery. We must be mindful when moving data that this can be fragile too. We must also create layers of backup the way insurance companies re-insure, that make any one cloud backup and recovery business redundant if it happens.
We hold the trust of our customers in our hands but trust is delicate too. We must cease trying to make a pile of money quickly, and become more interested in ensuring that data transferred back and forth is synchronised. The cloud backup and recovery industry needs only one notorious mistake, to become redundant itself in the ten years we mentioned.

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  • (+44)(0)20-7193-9751 – UK
Computer Forensics

So you had a customer data security breach last weekend? Do you know you could be held liable in court for failing to implement required security procedures? That’s right. Due to the overwhelming surge in identity theft wherein nearly 20 million Americans have already been affected, most states have enacted laws to curtail this fast rising crime. Therefore, it is important to redefine how your company deals with customer data security.

  • First, you’ll want to know what your obligations are as dictated by law. Some places, for example, require the destruction or deletion of personal data through shredding, erasing, or by rendering them undecipherable.
  • Second, not only do you need to comply with the said requirements, you’ll also have to prove in court that you actually complied if ever a security breach does happen.
  • Third, you need to be aware of your post-breach duties to avoid being dealt additional penalties.

Obviously, such situations now call for individuals who are experts in both the legal and technical aspects regarding data security. Such individuals are practitioners of a relatively new discipline known as computer forensics.

Armed with our computer forensics specialists, we’ll be able to help you deal with the above concerns. As a result, you can be prevented from having to pay fines that can go up to hundreds of thousands of euros.

There are other equally important reasons why you would want to avail of computer forensics services. For example, you’ll need computer forensics specialists because you want to:

  • Catch a person involved in criminal activities such as child porn, stealing of personal data, and destroying intellectual property.
  • Investigate a computer, network, or even a mobile device for clues that may lead to the culprit.
  • Determine the extent and possible causes when you discover your digital data has been damaged.
  • Find and recover damaged, deleted or encrypted data regardless of whether the cause was intentional or not. If the data in question will be used as evidence in a legal action, there are certain procedures that need to be followed during recovery operations to retain the integrity of the data. Computer forensic specialists are highly qualified for such operations.
  • Implement security policies in your organisation. Such policies have to operate within legal bounds if you want to avoid possible sanctions in the future. These policies should also be designed such that future forensic operations can be conducted with a high likelihood of success.

That said, a company that integrates computer forensics into its IT security policies and practices will be better equipped to remedy the situation once data security has already been compromised than a company that doesn’t.

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  • (+353)(0)1-443-3807 – IRL
  • (+44)(0)20-7193-9751 – UK
2015 ESOS Guidelines Chapter 2 – Deadlines and Status Changes

The ESOS process is deadline driven and meeting key dates is a non-negotiable. The penalties for not complying / providing false or misleading information are ?50,000 each. Simply not maintaining adequate records could cost you ?5,000. The carrot on the end of the stick is the financial benefits you stand to gain.

Qualifying for inclusion under the ESOS umbrella depends on the status of your company in terms of employee numbers, turnover and balance sheet on 31 December 2014. Regardless of whether you meet the 2014 threshold or not, you must reconsider your situation on 31 December 2018, 2022 and 2026.

Compliance Period Qualification Date Compliance Period Compliance Date
1 31 December 2014 From 17 July 2014* to 5 December 2015 5 December 2015
2 31 December 2018 From 6 December 2015 to 5 December 2019 5 December 2019
3 31 December 2022 From 6 December 2019 to 5 December 2023 5 December 2023
4 31 December 2026 From 6 December 2023 to 5 December 2027 5 December 2027

Notes:

1. The first compliance period begins on the date the regulations became effective

2. Energy audits from 6 December 2011 onward may go towards the first compliance report

Changes in Organisation Status

If your organisation status changes after a qualification date when you met compliance thresholds, you are still bound to complete your ESOS assessment for that compliance period. This is regardless of any change in size or structure. Your qualification status then remains in force until the next qualification date when you must reconsider it.

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