September

We are delighted to announce that Verifile Ltd has been accredited with an Investors in People (IIP) ‘Silver award'. This is the highest level that is achievable in the first year of accreditation.

Since 1991 the IIP has been setting standards that improve people management. As the UK’s leading accreditation for business improvement, IIP provides a wealth of resources for businesses to innovate, develop and grow, with a focus on good people making a great business.

To achieve this award, we had to take part in a detailed, audited process.  This involved our team completing the IIP online survey, taking part in interviews and focus groups, along with meeting observations.  IIP was then able to measure our performance against the IIP’s framework which is based around nine key indicators of high performance.

Successful IIP accreditation means we are a great employer and we have a clear commitment to sustainability. We will be working hard to implement the development recommendations, to further enhance the performance of our organisation. We will also use the IIP to facilitate the ongoing development of our people management practices.

Bupa Insurance Services Limited (Bupa) has been fined £175,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for failing to have effective security measures in place to protect customers’ personal information.

Between 6 January and 11 March 2017, a Bupa employee was able to extract the personal information of 547,000 Bupa Global customers and offer it for sale on the dark web.  The employee accessed the information via Bupa’s customer relationship management system, known as SWAN. The system holds customer records relating to 1.5 million people.

The employee sent bulk data reports to his personal email account. The compromised information, which included names, dates of birth, email addresses and nationality, was later offered for sale on the dark web.

You may remember from our April newsletter that AccessNI, the government agency issuing criminal certificates for Northern Ireland, are modernising their IT system. We can now share further details of changes to their service.

• If you use the AccessNI service you must create a new NI Direct account and link this to your existing AccessNI account. For guidance on this process, please click here (you will need to log in first. If you do not have an account please register for one)
• Using a new NI Direct account, digital certificates will largely replace paper certificates from 17 July 2018.
• Candidates can opt to receive a paper certificate and can choose where the paper certificate is sent to.
• We recommend that you encourage your candidates to request a paper certificate.
• Paper certificates will always be issued if there are convictions.
• When the candidate's digital certificate is issued to them, they can view and share the certificate to an email address.
• When the candidate shares the certificate, the certificate can be viewed for up to 3 days.
• Status updates available to you via the AccessNI portal will remain the same as before. For example, applications will show as 'Certificate issued' when the check is finished.