Mumbai, April 21, 2006 (Sources)

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), a $2.59 billion company, has announced that the company has received the globally recognized British Standard (BS) 7799 (accepted as the global standard ISO17799) certification, which provides a comprehensive set of controls comprising best practices in information security.

M&M has completed an audit carried out by STQC, the authorized certification body for the standard, and the certificate has been presented to the M&M management. Mahindra Special Services Group (SSG), an InfoSec consulting firm helped in the implementation of Information Security Management System and provided handholding for the certification.

The BS7799 certification demonstrates M&M’s commitment to have a sophisticated security infrastructure in place which would help to protect its innovations and secure its business operations, thus making it one of few business houses in India with such far reaching vision.

The InfoSec consulting firm Mahindra Special Services Group implemented the Information Security Management System (ISMS) across 48 area sales offices and the 8 divisions of M&M – Auto Sector (AS), Farm Equipment Sector (FES), Mahindra Defence Systems (MDS), Mahindra Engineering Services (MES), Strategic Sourcing Business Unit (SSBU), Mahindra Special Services Group (MSSG), Transport Services Group (TSG) and the Spares Business Unit (SBU). This makes it the largest information security process implementation in the manufacturing sector in India.

Anand Mahindra, vice chairman & managing director, M&M said, “We have always believed that the true assets of our company are not what lie in our inventory today – but what will be in our inventory tomorrow. Towards that end, it was important for us to embark on an initiative that would protect our innovation & shareholders value. While there were many ways to do this, we also realized that a certification must be a by- product and not a goal. Also if we were to ingrain a sense of information discipline into our culture we needed to implement this initiative from inside out and through its length and breadth.”