A prestigious third party certification can go a long way to help businesses win customers’ confidence and an astute entrepreneur would always rely on such a certification to provide the foundation stone for building up a long lasting relationship with customers.

AT&T (News - Alert), a leader in managed cloud based security, realized this and accordingly came up with its AT&T SureSeal Security Certified Program. This certification program is designed to assess an enterprise's information security program or critical business components and certify that they meet industry standards.

AT&T informed that completion of the AT&T SureSeal Security Certified Program requires compliance with open and published standards taken directly from regulatory requirements and industry standards. These standards are generally accepted in the industry, and AT&T openly shares the standards and assessment techniques with customers.

“Successful business leaders know a critical step in growing strong and long-lasting customer relationships is building trust. With the AT&T SureSeal(SM) Security Certified Program, an enterprise can now communicate through a credible and impartial third party like AT&T the many important steps they've taken to protect their critical infrastructure and their customers' private data,” Todd Waskelis, vice president, security consulting services, AT&T.

Through a press release, AT&T provided a detail of its certification program.

The program process includes two key phases:

The assessment phase consists of a detailed analysis of a business' networks and data flow. Typically, this phase is performed through documentation reviews, interviews and technical analysis.

And then, once a business or organization has successfully achieved compliance with the selected standards, it is certified for a period of one year, renewable annually. Once certified, businesses can generate reports for auditors, regulators and other parties and also secure access to the full Certification Assessment Report, which details all regulations and standards that are evaluated, along with all findings.

Failure to meet compliance requirements can result in increased audits, penalties, transaction costs and lower revenues for an enterprise. The AT&T SureSeal Security Certified Program offers a single-service approach to assess the security posture of a business. The certification program also provides impartial third-party credibility for organizations that want to communicate that their information security program follows best practices.

Info Tech, Inc., the AT&T customer that recently underwent this AT&T certified program is particularly impressed by its emphasis on details of the processes and procedures of the company under review.

“We were pleased with the thorough review of our processes and procedures by the very knowledgeable consultants at AT&T. The meticulous work of the AT&T Security Consulting and risk management team is the real value behind the certification,” Valerie Riley, a spokesperson for Info Tech, Inc., said.