server room and data center audits. It is intended to be used as a guideline for plan- ning, implementation and acceptance testing of server rooms and data centers. Nowadays, the physical security and availability of IT is of vital importance to companies as many IT-supported business processes run as real-time applications. Interruptions would immediately result in inconvenient failures and possibly losses in production. Many banks and insurance companies include availability results in their risk assessments for loans and premiums.

This new test method from EuroCert was developed due to growing market demands. It considers the previously known Basel III requirements for IT availability (effective from 2013).

The list of criteria is based on standards established by the German BSI (Federal Office for Information Security), Uptime Institute, TIA 942 – (1) (2) and the publications of the German VdS institution (Property Insurers’ Association), in particu- lar VdS 2007. This list of criteria allows comprehensive testing of IT infrastructure and operation. It is constantly updated. New rules and regulations are added at regular intervals.