The internet offering provided by Zen has been awarded “PSN” or Public Service Network accreditation recently for the IP VPN offering it provides. This award allows the independent connectivity service to provide its solutions to a range of public sector organisations, including NHS hospitals and local authorities.
In simple terms, the PSN accreditation signifies that Zen’s protocols and infrastructure are robust and secure enough to carry sensitive public sector data safely. In order to demonstrate this efficiently, Zen has had to go through stringent testing to receive CESG Assured Service certification for telecoms, known as “CAS(T)”. The company has also been required to go through an extensive IT health check.
CAS(T) certification demonstrates evidence that a network has been built, operated, and managed in a way that can effectively meet strict standards for availability and security. What’s more, the certificate outlines Zen with “trusted supplier” status for its public service contracts.
The Challenge of Achieving Accreditation
The award of PSN accreditation is no small thing for businesses today, and this development shows all of the hard work that the Zen team has done – specifically because they managed to achieve the certificate so quickly. According to the technical director of Zen, Jon Bauer, it was crucial for Zen to achieve this accreditation because it gives them the “opportunity to support a whole new sector”.
However, besides the chance to work within the public sector, Zen also believes that the accreditation goes to show their customers – from all networks – just how seriously they take the security of data and information. The Zen network, and the management responsible for supporting that network has achieved incredible standards to be recognized as a public-sector supplier.
According to the Cabinet Office, for any business to successfully be awarded with PSN compliance, telecoms must be able to demonstrate that the infrastructure they use is secure enough to ensure that its connection to the public sector would not demonstrate a risk to the network security available. In other words, this means that the Zen compliant infrastructure currently meets the requirements for the patching and monitoring of existing vulnerabilities, and that it is securely configured to fight back against spyware, viruses, and other threats. The Zen network is managed by a series of polices and privileges for security, and protective intrusion detection and monitoring is in place, alongside a robust incident response policy intended to mitigate harm.
Trusting the Zen Network
Access to the Zen network is currently controlled by strict authentication measures and access control strategies. According to Jon Bauer, the fact that their consumers should be able to trust their network from a range of sources is essential to the company’s future, and is crucial to reassuring “customers old and new”.
The latest PSN accreditation has followed a significant investment recently placed within Zen’s core network, and another expansion within their existing on-net presence. When combined, these latest developments will all work to create a more secure and stable network offered by Zen’s robust reach to over 500,000 post codes in the UK.
