ARC Group and its subsidiaries (“ARC”) achieved gold certification to the IASME Governance Standard for its Information Security controls following an independent auditing assessment by Channel Islands information technology business Alternative Solutions.
ARC also achieved audited assessment to the UK government’s National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Essentials Plus scheme.
ARC Group is the first commercial company outside of the Information Technology sector to accomplish independent certification to both standards in Guernsey.
Philip Bodman, chief operating officer at ARC Group, said: “ARC was quick to get on board with Alternative Solutions’ plans to introduce Cyber Essentials and IASME standards to the Channel Islands. Particularly, in advance of GDPR legislation, we realised that attaining the IASME standard would allow us to demonstrate our competence at cyber security such that we are able to protect our customers’ information. We are very pleased to have attained these independently certified standards.”
Matthew Neville, professional services director at Alternative Solutions, said: “Congratulations to ARC as achieving IASME Gold is a significant task requiring a high level of commitment across the whole company.”
Cyber Essentials Plus is an independently audited technical security standard developed by the UK Government and industry. Certification recognises the achievement of UK government endorsed standards of cyber hygiene and demonstrates to customers, investors, insurers and others that an organisation has taken these essential precautions.
The IASME standard was developed over several years to create an attainable cyber security standard for small to medium sized enterprises (SME). It maps directly to the international standard, ISO 27001, which is comprehensive but recognised as extremely challenging for a smaller company to accomplish and maintain.
The gold standard of IASME, as achieved by ARC Group is seen as demonstrating baseline compliance with the international standard, ISO 27001.