A new information security and regulatory compliance certification course is to be launched in the UK this month designed to provide IT security professionals with the best practices required to limit the risk of security and regulatory breaches.

The Holistic Information Security Practitioner (HISP) Certification Course will be run in the UK by risk management software specialist Information Governance (InfoGov). It will cover the integration of existing security management standards, such as ISO/IEC 27001:2005, with COBIT, COSO and Itil; and the various disciplines, including IT governance, risk management and security management, that are essential to maintaining regulatory compliance.

The standard has enjoyed success in the US since it was launched two years ago, with 1,000 IT professionals expected to be certified by the end of the year. Taiye Lambo, creator of the HISP accreditation and founder of the HISP Institute, said that the certification is proving particularly attractive to multi-national blue chip organisations, including ING Group and Microsoft, which have to deal with a raft of different national and international legislation. " My vision with HISP is to make it the de facto standard information security and regulatory compliance certification, evolving into a governance, risk management and compliance certification, over time," he said.

Stephen Hall, managing director of InfoGov, said there was a growing need for an over-arching standard for IT security and risk management that combined the wide range of accreditations now available. "There are so many standards out there and the numbers are increasing," he warned. "There is also a realisation that a lot of these standards are point solutions to specific problems so there is a real need for a unifying approach that can pull all these standards together."

Hall added that the company expected a high take up for the new course, particularly among security professionals at large multinationals. "The course looks at bringing together all these different standards into a more holistic approach," he explained. "The aim is to stop the situation where IT departments are focusing on complying with a different standard each year."

The launch of the new training course coincides with the unveiling this month of an updated version of InfoGov's Proteus risk and compliance management software suite, featuring a new dashboard module designed to provide managers with enhanced visibility over their firm's risk profile. Hall said that the new RiskView module would provide business execs with a graphical, easy-to-understand representation of their risk management data.