Irish-owned Certification Europe completes €400K contract


1 Mar 2011

Irish company Certification Europe has successfully completed an audit and certification of LV= Insurance despite strong international competition, the company announced today.

Certification Europe provides certification and training services in quality management, environmental management, health and safety, IT service management, information security and energy management.

The company announced it has awarded investment, insurance and retirement group LV= the Information Security standard for its secure management of information. LV= adds this standard to the ISO 38500 Governance and ISO 20000 Service Management standards awarded early in 2010. LV= is the first financial services company in the UK to have achieved all three of these coveted standards.

LV= has collaborated with global software producer CA over the last 18 months to achieve these awards, which help underline the company’s focus on IT governance, service management and security management.

The ISO 27001 standard specifies a management system that demonstrates information security is controlled on an ongoing basis, mandating specific requirements to show control across the organisation.

Commenting on the awards, Mitch Lambton, LV= Group IT director, said, “This is a fantastic achievement and shows our commitment to IT best practice. We believe the standards give us competitive advantage when competing for business deals with partners as it shows our commitment and delivery to best practice standards.” 

Certification Europe has been gradually expanding into international markets, and secured significant UK business recently. The company, which has opened a new office every year for the past three years, will be opening its first London-based office this month.

“The three-way partnership approach adopted by ourselves, CA and LV= was a critical success factor in this project. While we all had specific roles, the use of open, proactive communication between all partners ensured a smooth, efficient process without impacting on the quality, impartiality or objectivity of the certification activity,” said commercial director of Certification Europe, John Ryan.