Sustainability | People, Planet, Profits.
In sustainable business, there are three governing pillars: People, Planet, and Profits. Businesses which are committed to these pillars have great potential to create real value for society. This relates to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - a globally accepted framework that addresses the issues all countries face; starting with poverty and ending with world peace.
The goals aim to bring all groups – especially those marginalized – into a better present and future. Here is an overview of what the 17 goals aim to accomplish by 2030 as quoted from The World Economic Forum:
- Ending global poverty and hunger;
- Reducing global inequalities (i.e., women, social classes & countries);
- Develop societies that are peaceful, just and inclusive of all people;
- Protecting human rights, gender equality and supporting the empowerment of women and girls;
- Protecting the planet and all its natural resources (i.e., land, air, bodies of water);
- Creating the ideal conditions for more sustainable, inclusive and sustained economic growth, leading to shared prosperity and decent work for all people.
The goals in short are related to socio-economic, environmental and political factors. Inter-related and complementary to each other, the goals actively protect and preserve our people and planet. It is hoped that by achieving all the goals, a sustainable and peaceful world can be developed. All it takes is collaboration between everyone!
Why are the SDGs important to us?
The SDGs are important to us at EryID as we believe that businesses have a duty to be sustainable and should aim to generate value that can be felt by as well as shared within our community. Furthermore, the SDGs can be implemented by any country and business. As such we have committed to these two goals:
- SDG 5: Gender Equality; and
- SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
We are especially focused on SDG 5 as a cybersecurity company since women globally still do not make up 50% of the cybersecurity space. Nonetheless, at our company, we have a 50% female workforce and our Executive Team is 50% female. Other actions we have taken related to helping women can be seen with our parent company, Abliminal who partnered with the Canadians Women's Foundation to host International Women's Day 2021: Corporate Citizenship for Gender Equality. Since then, Abliminal has started developing a program, Abliminal's Solution Challenge that aims to help neurodivergent females bring their ideas to a startup phase under our guidance. As a subsidiary of Abliminal, we at EryID are supporting these developments.
Cyberattacks, related to cybersecurity has been identified as a Top 5 global risk in the Global Risk Report by the World Economic Forum. At EryID, we address cybersecurity issues, by helping organizations highlight and action issues as well as gaps in their IAM (Identity and Access Management) program. Our work contributes to ensuring economic stability for other businesses, even governments, allowing them to grow and develop safety. This relates to SDG 8 of decent work and economic growth.
Our Actions
In the future, we aim to address more goals that align with our company and educate ourselves more about the UN SDGs. To date, as a remote company, we are individually taking action to be more sustainable. Here are some of the ways we are currently doing so:
- Changing our food habits (i.e., vegan meals, meatless days in a week, home grown gardens, shopping local, using apps to track food waste & order sustainable options);
- Reducing our carbon footprint (i.e., cycling, walking to events, switching off electronics when possible); and
- Volunteering! Apart from our commitments to the SDGs, we also aim to help the communities we live in. Together with our partners, our teams gather when possible to volunteer our hours and efforts. Here is a recent event we hosted, "Park Clean Up | JJ Plaus Park, Port Credit"
EyrID x SailPoint. For three hours, the team of eight cleaned up nearly six bags of garbage. And one of our team members, Daniel cycled 10km to attend!
We are committed to continual improvement at EryID and are now attempting to have monthly volunteering events to continue our efforts while staying committed to our beliefs.
Change starts with one action!
