ISO27001:
Information Security & Data
Management
After the success of the Quality
Management System and with an ever changing market the
requirements for a system to manage customer data became
paramount.
The decision was made in April 2005 that we
needed a firm structure to sit behind the company to ensure that
customers data was kept as safe and secure as possible. It would
also ensure that employees were screened before they started so
that the integrity of staff could not be called in to question.
A team of ten people were selected across the business. Again, this
would be a company wide system as data permeates throughout each
department. In the first few months of defining what needed to be
achieved the scope and size of the project became more apparent. It
was a MASSIVE undertaking. There was lots of talk about whether we
would be able to manage the amount of work required as well as
doing our normal operational tasks. Again, the Managing Director
assured everyone that the company’s commitment both from a time and
financial perspective was rock solid. It wasn’t a case of ‘if’ we
could achieve it but a question of when!
That was when he then told us that the provisional date for the
external auditors to come in was scheduled for Feb 2006. We had
seven months to implement the system in all areas of the business.
It may sound like quite a long time but if you see the size of the
scope of the system or have ever implemented it yourself then you
will know the challenges faced to achieve this! A lot of companies
look to put the system in place in a business unit or a specific
department. Company wide accreditation is a whole different ball
game I can assure you!
As the quality system the information security system is based on a
set of principles that we stuck too and still do today. These three
are:-
• Confidentiality - We look to, wherever
possible, ensure that customer’s data is kept confidential
• Integrity - Data stored with us is
protected in a number of ways and backups
taken regularly to ensure that data is not lost
• Availability - As Hosted Service
Provider customers having access to their data as much as
we can achieve is fundamental. (For example our availability
of Hosted Exchange on average over the past three months
has been 99.96%!)
Much work and commitment was required from the project team but
gradually over the months the areas that needed to be covered were
ticked off one by one. The MD stuck by his word and the time and
financial resource was indeed available to everyone when they
needed it. When we approached the audit date of February there were
a lot of nerves but we felt pretty confident after all the work
that we’d put in. As with the 9001 system we passed first time and
the bottles of champagne definitely flowed that day! It was a
fantastic achievement that the whole company played their part
in!
We’ve now had three full external audits from our accreditation
body, the latest being February 2008 and although it never gets any
easier we appreciate now how beneficial the system is to the
company and maybe, if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be here!
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