Data Security and the role of ISO 27001 certification

Data Security? But we’ve got passwords and virus checking????

2020 has been a difficult year in many ways, but some businesses seem to take a longer time to learn lessons than others. OK so we’re a bit geeky, had a PC in the very early nineties, remember when software came on disks, like playing with gadgets and stuff. But you’d think that being careful with your data was pretty common knowledge by now surely? Nobody really sends their bank details to Nigerian Princes believing they will receive millions in cash because he has nobody else to give it to, do they? And yet, the last few months shows people still haven’t learned:

14 Sep 2020 18,000 Covid-19 test results put online by mistake

16 Oct 2020 British Airways fined £20m over data breach

30 Oct 2020 Marriott fined £18.4m for hotel guests data breach

13 Nov 2020 Ticketmaster fined £1.25m over payment data breach

23 Nov 2020 Children’s names published in email

26 Nov 2020 NHS data breach involving 284 patients uncovered

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c0ele42740rt/data-breaches

And those are just a few of the issues which hit the headlines, like many, many phenomena this is just the tip of a huge iceberg, the big names which make big headlines, beneath these monoliths are smaller companies losing millions, and rarely spoken about. ISO 27001 describes a routine system for assessing the risks to your business information and data, the controls to put in place to address those risks, and the periodic checks you need to complete to ensure those risks, and the new ones which will develop tomorrow, are identified, actioned and closed down.

Getting a UK government backed certificate to say that your system addresses ISO 27001 gives you, and all those affected by your operations, additional confidence. If you are sharing data with customers, suppliers or even colleagues they will all have more confidence in you if they know you have invested the time to make sure that such information is safe and secure.