COL Limited, an IT services subsidiary of Wharf T&T and the leading IT services provider in Hong Kong, today announced that three of its data centres, two of its business recovery centres and tape vault operations in Hong Kong have received the ISO/IEC 20000:2005 and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification. COL is one of the few companies in Asia awarded with the dual certification simultaneously, demonstrating an unwavering commitment to information security and continuous enhancement in professional information services management.

The very nature of the financial sector requires information security as a critical success factor throughout the business process, driven by the industry guidelines and internal information security standards as set by the clients. For the past three decades, COL has always been a close and reliable partner of the finance and insurance industry through the provision of highly secured data centres and business continuity and disaster recovery services. The attainment of the certification attests to COL’s rigorous implementation of all aspects of information security as well as a structural and systematic procedure of IT services management to meet the stringent International IT standards.

“COL has pioneered to provide dealing room business recovery service for the Hong Kong financial sector and we have been the largest business recovery service provider for financial dealing room services in Hong Kong, “said Norris Hickerson, Vice President of COL. “The certification came just in time to recognize our years of efforts to establish safe and secured recovery back-up services for the industry at large. We are very proud of having achieved dual ISO certification which is one of the first in Asia to adopt meticulous approach in IT service management and information security. Our adherence to stringent quality requirements has provided our customers with dual quality assurance and peace-of-mind.”

COL has been practising rigid quality policy on information service management and the ISO/IEC 20000:2005 and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification have confirmed that our data centre management services, facility management services, business continuity services, business recovery services, disaster recovery services and tape vault services are now in full compliance with the International standards.

“COL has demonstrated a concerted team work throughout the audit process. Aiming high and setting an aggressive goal to achieve the ISO/IEC 20000:2005 and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 standards in one go need company-wide efforts and strong support from the management on work arrangement. Their strong determination and persistent efforts to overcome complicated quality requirements have earned them the certification within 12 months, “said Fanny Zou, District Manager of Bureau Veritas Certification South China. “We are glad to see that COL has established the best-in-class quality practice for Hong Kong industry and we are confident that COL will continue their efforts on quality management.”

ISO/IEC 20000:2005 is the first International standard specifically for IT Service Management. It describes an integrated set of management processes for the effective delivery of services to the business and its customers. ISO/IEC 27001:2005 adopts a process approach for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving an organisation’s Information Security Management System.

In addition to ISO/IEC 20000:2005 and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 standards, COL was the first service provider to attain ISO 9001:2000 for its business continuity services in 2004.