A Journey Towards Building Trust and Security with ISO 27001 Certification

How it all started

We are a leading technology and digital solutions company for agribusiness and hold one of the largest agricultural databases in the world.

Considering our business model, which provides intelligence to the most important agribusiness companies in highly critical decision-making processes, we recognize and reinforce the importance of information security and the need to protect our clients’, partners’, and suppliers’ data.

Therefore, it was essential to have a well-defined certification scope to ensure the necessary security and to continue evolving.

The Challenges

With the growing demand for cybersecurity and data protection, we faced the challenge of ensuring the trust of players in the agro chain regarding how we collect, process, store, and deliver information while democratizing technology.

Additionally, one of our clients, Rabobank, a major global agribusiness bank, is subject to rules, processes, and procedures that must meet the requirements of Brazil, the Netherlands, and Europe. This implies maintaining a significant number of controls under strict supervision to ensure compliance.

“When our partner presents an ISO 27001 certificate with internationally recognized validity, a large part of the controls are automatically addressed, as they are already covered in the audit assessments,” clarified Cleber Humberto Balieiro, IT Lead – Brazil Financing at Rabobank.

Thus, complying with international regulations became increasingly crucial to strengthen our reputation and, above all, reinforce our approach to security, generating even more market confidence. Moreover, many companies require ISO 27001 certification from suppliers and partners.

“For a long time, we have sought within our organization excellence in quality processes, whether in development, processes, testing, or deployment methodology. In parallel, every day, we need to create more secure computing environments for our applications and, most importantly, our clients’ data. Even though we were internally evolving this, we realized that without our business partners evolving as well, we would continue in an endless search without success. Within this context, we began asking our partners, such as Agrotools, to also evolve within their own environments,” Cleber explained.

Pursuing Certification: The Beginning of the Journey More than ever, it was essential to adopt rigorous protocols to strengthen our cyber defenses and ensure comprehensive data protection.

So, we embarked on the journey to become one of 165 Brazilian companies to obtain ISO 27001 certification, with 89 of them in the information technology sector. We dealt with a series of rigorous audits, risk analyses, senior management involvement, objective and strategy definition, resource and competency allocation, operational controls, and continuous improvement. It’s unclear how many of these companies are certified across their entire scope, as one can certify only part of their technology. The fact is that Agrotools’ technology is fully certified.

“In the end, it’s a very good result for Agrotools, having its processes defined and reviewed, bringing greater security within its scope of operation. On the other hand, it provides comfort to the Bank, knowing that one of our main partners has evolved to reduce the exposure of our operation’s risk, as we work in a SaaS model with Agrotools,” points out Cleber.

And so, we achieved ISO 27001 certification, the international benchmark for Information Security management. With this certification, we aim to promote security in compliance with legal and contractual requirements, in an auditable and verifiable manner.

What Results Did We Achieve?

Agrotools is one of the few companies that have a certification scope focused on its entire technological operation. In practical terms, this means we apply the best practices in Information Security regarding the privacy, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our services,” explains Rafael Gomes, Agrotools’ IT Director.

ISO 27001 certification has brought many benefits. First, we gained even more credibility and strength in the market, demonstrating that we follow international security standards.

This made us an even more reliable partner.

Additionally, we protect important data, such as financial information, client records, and company secrets. This ensured that our most valuable assets were safe from internal and external threats.
The pursuit of certification also improved the user experience. Our more secure processes and clear rules resulted in greater satisfaction among clients, suppliers, and partners,
boosting loyalty and business growth.

Implementing ISO 27001 controls made our operations more efficient. With increased security, our services became more available, meaning more consistent and reliable deliveries. This reinforced our reputation as an organization that delivers excellent results.

The entire journey to obtain certification involved technical aspects and also changed our internal culture. The practices adopted for certification created a safer work environment, where employees became involved in the continuous protection of data, strengthening team spirit and shared responsibility for information security.

“Agrotools managed to respond to our call to structure themselves, and the operation continued. Even though there were likely impacts, wear and tear, and unplanned investments, we, as clients, did not notice this. For sure, today it would be easier than two or three years ago; largely due to the experience gained ‘the hard way’, but enhanced by having robust processes that evolved to achieve the recent certification, which should be recognized as an investment for Agrotools and its partners,” according to Cleber.

A Milestone for Agrotools and Agribusiness

By investing in Information Security and data protection, we not only ensured our competitiveness but also built a solid foundation of trust.

In addition to a technical achievement, this certification is tangible proof of our commitment to providing high-quality, secure, and reliable services that extend beyond Brazil’s borders to the global agribusiness sector.