This year, we are once again very grateful for the great commitment of our colleagues to our mission "more security" and beyond. In fact, some of our colleagues are involved in projects that cannot be assigned to a specific company project but are nevertheless of great importance - both professionally and socially. For this reason, usd founded the usd Circles in 2019. Inspired by the Holacracy principle, colleagues from all departments can team up to form a usd Circle and work together to realize projects that are important to them. As the new year begins, we look back on their efforts in 2024:
usd Responsibility Circle
There are many social challenges that are important to our colleagues beyond usd's "more security" mission: whether it's participating in Girls'Day 2024, sporting activities as part of charity runs, donating hardware for more equal opportunities in education and nature conservation - initiated by our Responsibility Circle, many colleagues once again got involved for a good cause this year.
With usd's participation in Girls'Day 2024, our Responsibilty Circle colleagues in particular were able to realize a passionate project this year by enabling 20 girls to get a glimpse into the professional world of IT security for a day.
Thanks to the Circle, things also got athletic again this year: all colleagues were able to take part in charity runs in Frankfurt, Munich and Cologne on a voluntary basis.
At the end of the year, the Responsibility Circle organized the traditional usd Christmas donations: In addition to donations in kind for the Speisekammer Neu-Isenburg, a total of €11,000 went to Stiftung Deutsche Krebshilfe and the FeM Mädchen*haus Frankfurt.
The donation of decommissioned hardware also enabled students in Senegal to take part in online lectures at the university. This gives them the opportunity to take up a course of study that would otherwise have been denied to them.
usd Cloud Circle
In 2024, the usd Cloud Circle continued the professional exchange across (specialist) departments. Knowledge of cloud technologies and cloud security was shared and further expanded across usd via various meetings and internal projects. As always, the focus was also on the question of how our different types of services can best complement each other in order to offer our customers the greatest possible added value.
usd AI Circle
Artificial intelligence (AI) remains a major topic for companies. The definition of AI is interpreted in various ways, which leads to a certain amount of gray area in its application. Although AI is being used in numerous companies, there is often a lack of concrete guidelines on information security, cyber security and data protection. This applies both to the requirements of external auditors as well as internal compliance areas and industry-specific standards. In order to be able to support our customers with these challenges at an early stage, the experts at usd have joined forces in the AI Circle to examine and discuss these issues from the perspective of their respective specialist domains.
usd Student Circle
Our working students are an important part of usd. The usd Student Circle helps working students find their way at usd and network with each other. The “Become a Hero Student Program” took place again in November 2024. In addition to team building measures, the students got to know the different departments at usd and their colleagues better.
The usd Student Circle also organized a “Meet & Greet” at all locations, where students were able to get to know each other better over lunch.
We would like to thank all our colleagues for their commitment and look forward to future usd Circle projects.