In today’s competitive marketplace for managed servers and hosting, it can be difficult to differentiate between providers and their service offerings. At catalyst2, we mark ourselves out in the managed IT services marketplace by our quality.

By quality, we don’t just mean our ISPA awards and nominations, including winning the Best Customer Service Award and being a finalist for Best Hosted Provider. As an ISO27001-certified organisation, we are committed to delivering the highest standards of information security for our managed servers and hosting.

What is ISO27001?

ISO27001 for information security management provides a set of standards and requirements for an information security management system. Completion of the ISO27001 certification process provides an external form of accreditation that shows the certified organisation adheres to the required standards in the management of the security of third party digital information held on their servers or hosting platform.

ISO27001 and managed servers

IT providers offering a managed server solution typically provide a 24/7 proactive monitoring service to ensure that a client’s critical digital business infrastructure including website and email, run as efficiently as possible, with the maximum amount of service uptime available. If a server crashes during or outside of business hours, the managed server provider will receive a notification and start the process to diagnose and resolve the issue as soon as possible.

In addition to server and website monitoring, a managed server client should expect a 100% network uptime commitment. Additional ‘extras’ included with a managed server plan should include fully installed firewalling, automated regular security updates, instant failover during server migration and regular off-site backups.

When assessing your server management partner, it is helpful to know that IT service providers with the ISO27001 certification adhere to an internationally recognised set of information security standards.

This is to ensure that all managed servers hosting digital information including employee data, financial data, intellectual property or any other assets, should be following an established set of procedures for the storing of digital information safely and securely.

ISO27001 managed hosting

When choosing to host your business website and email services on a dedicated or shared server solution, there are a wide array of managed hosting services available. When considering which service provider is best for your organisation, server location and information security should be at the top of your list.

In addition to looking out for the ISO27001 certification that provides that extra peace of mind from the knowledge that your organisation’s data will be hosted and managed in line with industry-leading standards of security, it is worth checking on the location of the hosted server.

Is your managed hosting provider offering hosting on UK-based servers or in a location outside of the UK? It is known that UK-based organisations hosting websites with a primarily UK target market, can benefit from improved website performance if their server is also hosted in the UK.

The UK also offers additional protection for the storage of your business information from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements introduced in 2016.

If your website experiences a sudden increase in demand, a managed hosting service can efficiently and effectively scale up to provide the extra capacity your website requires.

About catalyst2

If you would like your managed service and hosting provider to take away the worry from the data security and reliability of your business-critical digital infrastructure, contact catalyst2 on 0800 107 79 79 to discuss your needs.

We are an award-winning, ISO27001-certified, UK-based IT services company specialising in bespoke physical dedicated servers and virtual servers, built and tailored to the specific requirements of your organisation.