Kuwait Finance House - Bahrain (KFH-Bahrain) Data Centre has been awarded the prestigious information security certification ISO 27001, following a stringent audit by an international certification body. It is the first Islamic bank in the Kingdom to achieve this milestone. The ISO certificate was presented to Mr. Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat, the Managing Director and CEO of KFH-Bahrain. "We are delighted with this accreditation as it clearly demonstrates KFH-Bahrain's leadership in the Information technology arena of Islamic banking and financial sector in Bahrain. With this certification, the Bank will, Allah willing, be able to launch innovative electronic services for its retail and corporate customers. With the growing need for information security and IT Risk in the area of information technology, the importance of this achievement cannot be overstated", said Mr. Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat. "We have always been aware that the data centre, network infrastructure and other associated services play a vital role in running banking services. We therefore decided to adopt global best practices and implement ISO controls in our main Data Centre and network to mitigate the risk of intrusions and disruptions", he added. The purpose-built and scalable dedicated Data Centre makes KFH-Bahrain the first bank in the Kingdom to have virtualization technology which is capable of providing a fault tolerant, dependable and interruption free operation. The Data Centre infrastructure is based on an integrated rack, power and cooling solution complete with advanced management and monitoring hardware and software. The Data Centre significantly improved the overall reliability and accessibility with complete network redundancy, EMC data storage within a VMware virtualization environment. This state-of-the-art infrastructure will sustain KFH-Bahrain's technical requirements for the next 10 years with an integrated ability for future growth and IT transformation. This will also have a positive impact on the Bank's customers through improved IT services, higher availability of banking channels and a reduction in the Bank's operating risks, keeping in mind that the Data Centre provides its services and support 24/7. ISO 27001 has been acclaimed universally as a vital tool to manage and minimize the range of threats to which information is regularly subjected.