Anne commented, “The award followed a lengthy process during which the company underwent a transformation that now ensures every staff member is fully trained about the importance of security. New information security processes were implemented and, at first, not all of them were popular with our employees. Security is inconvenient in many ways but going through this process, everyone here now realises how vital it is to gain the trust of our customers. All of our security controls have been externally audited, measured and judged to have met this stringent and highly respected standard”.
M247 used a fully accredited independent auditor as this allows the use of a special version of the ISO 27001 logo which has a small tick and the crown, signifying that they have the accredited version. They even won an accolade from ISOQAR Limited, the company carrying out the independent audit, who commented “The M247 risk assessment was the most thorough we have seen”.
Anne Sillars comments further, “The importance of gaining this award is far-reaching and many of our customers have been in touch to express their congratulations. Our Kidderminster site and our Manchester head offices and datacentres each came under close scrutiny for four days. It’s been a very thorough process to push this through to completion and, as we’ve done all the risk assessments and documentation ourselves, we have a great sense of ownership of the whole thing. I’m very pleased that our customers will benefit as their confidence increases in our new systems”.
With a complex range of Internet services and well over 40,000 customers spread across every time zone on the planet, M247 handles a significant amount of business critical Internet traffic and operate a strategically important independent Internet connection with a number of sites on mainland Europe. It’s obvious from all of this that having secure systems is pivotal for their business.
M247 owns and operates what is known in the industry as a Tier 3 datacentre. The tiering system takes a number of factors into consideration, not least of which is data security which has now been given true authority with this award.