The Importance of ISO 27001 for Data Security

Achieving ISO 27001 status is important for any company that handle large amounts of documents and carry out data processing for other organisations. Having this international accreditation means that you are recognised as having undergone necessary IT security checks. This ensures that all of your clients documents are safely stored and processed within your IT systems.

Gaining this data security certificate means that important corporate information is protected from threats such as hacking, viruses, data theft or natural disasters. Therefore it is an essential accreditation for data capture and document management companies that process other people's data and handle documents electronically in large volumes.

Within web based document management there are certain areas that would particularly need the protection of an approved IT system. Hosted document management, data capture and scanning all involves processing and storing clients' sensitive information. So companies involved in any of these processes should ideally have the ISO 27001 accreditation in place.

ISO 27001 is the only IT systems security accreditation of its kind. Achieving this means that companies with the certificate, which handle data for others, are specially recognised as having processes that ensure all information assets are safe.

This can give organisations greater confidence when employing a document management company to handle their important and sensitive data. It means the document management company is following a recognised, international standard of IT system security.

To obtain the ISO 27001 certificate, companies have to go through a thorough risk management carried out by independent consultants. This process examines the data security systems already in place within the document management company. The consultants may then make recommendations to the company in question so that they may mitigate any IT system data security risks in order to gain the certificate.

There are international organisations specialising in helping such companies to gain quality certificates. These organisations can make the ISO 27001 assessment process relatively quick and simple. Once any recommendations have been addressed, gaining the accreditation can take as little as thirty days. The cost and bureaucracy involved can also be reduced by using a specialist organisation to manage applications for an ISO certificate.

So with a few easy steps, document management and data capture companies can work towards ISO 27001 accreditation and a permanent stamp of approval on their IT business systems.