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Today, data security is like toughened skin keeping out diseases, weather, and attacks. If you don’t have good data security, your organisation is like a body without skin – all those vital parts of your organisation are wide open to attack.
An attack doesn’t always mean a breach. As soon as there is a breach, there is the almost possibility of compromised data – and more importantly, loss of reputation with your customers and employees. Trust is the highest form of currency for companies, such as banks, hospitals, lawyers, and police. Once trust has been compromised, it takes years to rebuild – if ever.
Data, including personal data, fuels data science. Data science companies running in the cloud often depend heavily on third-party software components. As such, they run a higher risk of compromised credentials.
This is why protecting against vulnerabilities in third-party software, cloud misconfiguration, and compromised credentials are so important, and directly connected to data science.
What is ISO 27001?
ISO 27001 is an international standard for an ISMS. An ISMS is a framework of policies and procedures that includes all legal, physical, and technical controls involved in an organisation’s information risk management processes.
The ISMS preserves the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information by applying a risk management process and gives confidence to interested parties that these risks are adequately managed.
Intellerts ISMS comprises the Data-Science-as-a-Service solutions. The Intellerts ISMS focuses on the following main aspects of the organisation:
- Intellerts or customer data platform and all its components
- Personnel and organisation (procedures, instructions, policies, codes, behaviour, tasks, responsibilities, and authorisation)
- IT Assets (infrastructure, data garden, software, applications)
- Documentation and information (mail, files, reports, etc.)
- Housing (physical security to the extent relevant to information security)
The way many Data Science companies view Security.
With several moving parts in Data science – data integration, data modelling, BI & data analysis, advanced analytics, the technical stack and the business involvement- security is often an oversight. If you’re a small to mid-sized business bet around 40% of businesses are victims of a cyber attack, and the larger the company, the higher the percentage. What would you do if the doctor told you there was a 40% chance of getting infected or you could take steps to lower the infection rate?I know what I would do. That’s what we do at Intellerts.
Stay Secure and Take Precautions
The highest security accreditation currently available for companies like Intellerts is ISO 27001. For the reasons given above, data science companies need to assure their clients of their processes around security. This is why, at Intellerts, we have prioritised the certification of ISO 27001. This accreditation proves we have and use the strategy to structure our Information Security. Intellerts’ imperative, is to handle information and data with the utmost care. Whether that information is from:
- our clients
- our own organisation
- employees
- third parties
We know the value, and we stake our livelihood on it.
Unauthorised access, data manipulation, and discontinued software and systems all have serious implications for the security of your sustainability as an organisation. That’s why an effective ISMS is crucial for your company to warehouse your data, IP, and personal information safely and securely.
The ISMS’ method’ clearly demonstrates our ability to meet your security standards, and internationally established information security standards for internal and external parties.
This while is also carefully managing our clients’ and individuals’ (sensitive) personal information or business data.
How Intellerts keeps your data secure (with ISO 27001)
When we work with you, we focus on the practical side and by iterating all procedures in your company using five steps. The following image lays out the steps. (Start at the “define” step.)
We distilled actions and best practices into:
Define:
First, we break down your most relevant processes and methods. From there, we examine how to simplify, look, and become more agile. (Not just in the term agile) Referring back to KISS (Keep it simple, stupid). Anytime a solution is already available, we assist in helping you adopt and adapt to evolve into a company empowered by data.
(Here are some technologies we have adopted: ITIL, OWASP, CIS Controls, SSDLC models of Microsoft, BIML Interactive Machine Learning Risk Framework, etc.)
Manage
Once we have systems and processes, it is time to document, plan, perform, measure, and control. This means ensuring each step and method is as efficient as it can be within its parameters. We use the tools and IT to automate the process – JIRA (agile project management), Opsgenie (ITSM), Confluence (Collaboration and documentation), and Zabbix (monitoring). Once the managing phase has fully implemented, you can build habits and routines around the processes and procedures.
Establish
The processes you implemented have one department you can then introduce to another – and to the rest of your teams and company. In each department and team, we train, validate, improve and tweak so that it suits them to operate at maximum efficiency.
Quantitatively Managed
In each phase and as a whole company, we measure and control using KPIs, dashboards, and weekly reports. Our goals are never to repeat the same mistakes. You understand your readiness, capabilities, and process situation entirely. The best part is real-time monitoring, so you know what’s going on with your company at any given time.
Optimise
Your company grows, changes, and evolves as you take on new employees and branch out. That’s why we continuously improve, pivot, and respond to opportunities and threats. No matter the action, investigate and improve if a process or procedure fails. We keep testing processes for resilience and resistance – Never waiting until it fails.
Now and into the future: Intellerts ISO 27001
Continual improvement and always iterating are part of the backbone of Intellerts. Intellerts has achieved data security standards of four years maturity in one intense year according to ISO27001. We know that by choosing Intellerts, you are choosing a company dedicated to your data security and progress. Through mutual collaboration, you will have a powerful team you can rely upon through attacks. We are proud of what we have achieved and will maintain the top performance in ISMS for all our products and services.
