Kon­ami Gam­ing Secures ISO 27001 Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for Casino Tech­nol­ogy Sys­tems

Kon­ami Gam­ing has announced that it has secured ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem sup­port­ing the SYNKROS casino man­age­ment sys­tem and Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment in the com­pa­ny’s approach to infor­ma­tion secu­rity, data gov­er­nance and oper­a­tional con­trols across its casino tech­nol­ogy and iGam­ing activ­i­ties.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was con­ducted by Schell­man & Com­pany, LLC, a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion body that pro­vides ISO man­age­ment sys­tem cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices. Accord­ing to Kon­ami Gam­ing’s announce­ment, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process involved a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of the com­pa­ny’s infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment frame­work and the con­trols sup­port­ing the rel­e­vant tech­nol­ogy oper­a­tions.

ISO/IEC 27001 is an inter­na­tion­ally recog­nised stan­dard for infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tems. It pro­vides organ­i­sa­tions with a struc­tured frame­work for iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion secu­rity risks, estab­lish­ing appro­pri­ate con­trols and con­tin­u­ally improv­ing their secu­rity man­age­ment processes.

Kon­ami Gam­ing strength­ens its infor­ma­tion secu­rity frame­work

For Kon­ami Gam­ing, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion applies to an area of its busi­ness where infor­ma­tion secu­rity is closely con­nected with the oper­a­tion of casino tech­nol­ogy and online gam­ing ser­vices.

The com­pa­ny’s SYNKROS casino man­age­ment sys­tem sup­ports a broad range of casino oper­a­tions and tech­nol­ogy func­tions. Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive extends the com­pa­ny’s gam­ing tech­nol­ogy port­fo­lio into reg­u­lated online mar­kets through its iGam­ing offer­ing.

As gam­ing envi­ron­ments become increas­ingly depen­dent on con­nected sys­tems, infor­ma­tion secu­rity has become an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for casino oper­a­tors and tech­nol­ogy sup­pli­ers. Sys­tems may han­dle oper­a­tional infor­ma­tion, player-related data, account infor­ma­tion and other busi­ness-crit­i­cal records, mak­ing struc­tured secu­rity gov­er­nance an impor­tant part of tech­nol­ogy man­age­ment.

The ISO 27001 frame­work is designed around this type of risk-based approach. Rather than focus­ing solely on indi­vid­ual tech­ni­cal safe­guards, it con­sid­ers the poli­cies, processes, respon­si­bil­i­ties and con­trols that col­lec­tively form an organ­i­sa­tion’s infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem.

Kon­ami Gam­ing said its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion demon­strates a con­tin­ued empha­sis on secu­rity and respon­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices.

Brian Alu, vice pres­i­dent of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy at Kon­ami Gam­ing, said: “Com­pli­ance before com­merce has been Konami’s long-held stan­dard across the organ­i­sa­tion and our work to clearly struc­ture our ISMS and achieve ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion demon­strates a con­tin­ued com­mit­ment towards this approach to our cus­tomers, part­ners and employ­ees.”

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cov­ers SYNKROS and online oper­a­tions

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant to Kon­ami’s SYNKROS tech­nol­ogy because casino man­age­ment plat­forms oper­ate across mul­ti­ple areas of a gam­ing prop­erty.

SYNKROS is designed to pro­vide casino oper­a­tors with enter­prise-wide man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties and inte­grates tech­nol­ogy used across casino envi­ron­ments. Kon­ami has con­tin­ued to expand the sys­tem’s capa­bil­i­ties through new oper­a­tional, cus­tomer ser­vice and employee-fac­ing appli­ca­tions.

The com­pa­ny’s online activ­i­ties have also become an increas­ingly impor­tant part of its tech­nol­ogy strat­egy. Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive was intro­duced as the branded pres­ence for Kon­ami’s iGam­ing offer­ing, pro­vid­ing online oper­a­tors with access to Kon­ami casino con­tent through its remote gam­ing server infra­struc­ture.

The com­bi­na­tion of land-based casino sys­tems and online gam­ing tech­nol­ogy makes infor­ma­tion secu­rity an increas­ingly rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tion across Kon­ami’s wider tech­nol­ogy port­fo­lio.

Kon­ami’s announce­ment said the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion gives casino cus­tomers and play­ers addi­tional assur­ance that infor­ma­tion is man­aged through a struc­tured sys­tem of processes and con­trols. The word­ing does not sug­gest that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion elim­i­nates secu­rity risks. Instead, ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vides evi­dence that an organ­i­sa­tion has estab­lished a for­mal man­age­ment sys­tem designed to iden­tify, assess and address infor­ma­tion secu­rity risks.

Inde­pen­dent assess­ment forms part of the process

ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion involves an exter­nal assess­ment of an organ­i­sa­tion’s man­age­ment sys­tem against the require­ments of the applic­a­ble stan­dard. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion there­fore dif­fers from an inter­nal state­ment that a com­pany fol­lows par­tic­u­lar secu­rity prac­tices.

Schell­man’s pub­lished cer­ti­fi­ca­tion method­ol­ogy describes an ini­tial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion audit fol­lowed by sur­veil­lance audits dur­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cycle. Its ISO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices include ISO/IEC 27001 and the com­pany states that it is accred­ited by ANAB and UKAS for ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices.

The dis­tinc­tion is impor­tant because an accred­ited cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process pro­vides an exter­nal assess­ment of whether the rel­e­vant man­age­ment sys­tem meets the require­ments of the stan­dard within its defined scope.

For Kon­ami Gam­ing, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process report­edly involved detailed prepa­ra­tion across sev­eral inter­nal func­tions. The com­pany said teams from human resources, sys­tems, mar­ket­ing, tech­ni­cal com­pli­ance, secu­rity, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy and iGam­ing were involved in the work.

Such cross-func­tional par­tic­i­pa­tion reflects the broader nature of an infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem. Secu­rity respon­si­bil­i­ties are not lim­ited to an IT depart­ment because infor­ma­tion can be cre­ated, accessed, trans­ferred and stored through­out an organ­i­sa­tion.

Kon­ami high­lights data pri­vacy and secu­rity

Tom Soukup, senior vice pres­i­dent and chief sys­tems prod­uct offi­cer at Kon­ami Gam­ing, linked the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to the com­pa­ny’s wider approach to data pri­vacy and secu­rity.

He said: “Inde­pen­dent cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of SYNKROS under ISO 27001 is part of Konami’s endur­ing com­mit­ment to data pri­vacy and secu­rity. Our research and devel­op­ment, qual­ity assur­ance and cus­tomer sup­port depart­ments take great effort in pro­vid­ing and sup­port­ing our award-win­ning SYNKROS casino prop­er­ties with the high­est level of data pri­vacy and secu­rity, using acclaimed best prac­tices.”

Soukup’s respon­si­bil­i­ties include the devel­op­ment of com­po­nents of the SYNKROS casino man­age­ment sys­tem. His cur­rent role places him within the senior lead­er­ship struc­ture respon­si­ble for the tech­nol­ogy and prod­uct direc­tion of the plat­form.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion con­se­quently sits along­side Kon­ami’s broader invest­ment in sys­tems devel­op­ment, prod­uct sup­port and tech­ni­cal oper­a­tions.

iGam­ing secu­rity remains a strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tion

Eduardo Aching, vice pres­i­dent of iGam­ing and inter­na­tional gam­ing oper­a­tions at Kon­ami Gam­ing, also high­lighted the rel­e­vance of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to the com­pa­ny’s online busi­ness.

He said: “For more than a decade, Konami’s iGam­ing team has oper­ated with an empha­sis on trust, secu­rity and player pro­tec­tion. Offi­cial ISO 27001 Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the devel­op­ment, deploy­ment and oper­a­tion of Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive is the lat­est mile­stone in a long his­tory of respon­si­ble prod­uct and organ­i­sa­tional integrity at Kon­ami.”

The state­ment places infor­ma­tion secu­rity within a wider con­text that includes player pro­tec­tion and oper­a­tional respon­si­bil­ity.

Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive has been expand­ing into addi­tional reg­u­lated mar­kets, with the com­pany con­tin­u­ing to intro­duce its online casino con­tent through mar­ket-spe­cific part­ner­ships. As this inter­na­tional expan­sion pro­gresses, con­sis­tent infor­ma­tion secu­rity processes can become increas­ingly impor­tant for tech­nol­ogy sup­pli­ers oper­at­ing across dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­tory envi­ron­ments.

For oper­a­tors eval­u­at­ing tech­nol­ogy sup­pli­ers, secu­rity cer­ti­fi­ca­tions can also form part of broader ven­dor due dili­gence. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion itself does not replace reg­u­la­tory approval, con­trac­tual safe­guards or an oper­a­tor’s own secu­rity assess­ments. It can, how­ever, pro­vide a recog­nised frame­work for eval­u­at­ing how an organ­i­sa­tion man­ages infor­ma­tion secu­rity risks.

Three-year cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cycle

Accord­ing to Kon­ami Gam­ing’s announce­ment, its ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is valid for three years, with annual sur­veil­lance reviews sched­uled to begin in 2027.

A multi-year cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cycle is con­sis­tent with the gen­eral approach used for ISO man­age­ment sys­tem cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Schell­man’s pub­lished method­ol­ogy describes an ini­tial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion audit fol­lowed by sur­veil­lance audits dur­ing the sec­ond and third years before a recer­ti­fi­ca­tion audit at the end of the cycle.

The con­tin­u­ing review process is sig­nif­i­cant because ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is not intended to be a one-time exer­cise. Infor­ma­tion secu­rity risks evolve as tech­nol­ogy, busi­ness oper­a­tions, threats and reg­u­la­tory expec­ta­tions change.

Main­tain­ing an effec­tive infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem there­fore requires ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing and improve­ment rather than reliance on the orig­i­nal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion assess­ment alone.

Broader impli­ca­tions for casino tech­nol­ogy

Kon­ami Gam­ing’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion comes at a time when casino tech­nol­ogy providers are increas­ingly expected to demon­strate for­mal approaches to cyber­se­cu­rity, data pro­tec­tion and oper­a­tional resilience.

Mod­ern casino envi­ron­ments depend on inter­con­nected sys­tems that sup­port cus­tomer engage­ment, gam­ing oper­a­tions, report­ing, loy­alty pro­grammes and other busi­ness func­tions. Online gam­ing adds another layer of com­plex­ity because tech­nol­ogy plat­forms may oper­ate across mul­ti­ple juris­dic­tions and inter­act with oper­a­tors, sup­pli­ers and other tech­nol­ogy infra­struc­ture.

Against this back­ground, recog­nised infor­ma­tion secu­rity frame­works can pro­vide a com­mon struc­ture for man­ag­ing organ­i­sa­tional risk.

For Kon­ami Gam­ing, the ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion also com­ple­ments its con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of SYNKROS and Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive. The com­pany has recently high­lighted expan­sion across land-based gam­ing sys­tems, casino tech­nol­ogy and online casino con­tent as part of its broader mar­ket strat­egy.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion should there­fore be viewed as one com­po­nent of the com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­ogy and com­pli­ance frame­work rather than as a stand­alone secu­rity claim.

What the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion means for cus­tomers

For casino oper­a­tors and other Kon­ami cus­tomers, the prac­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance of ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion lies in the for­mal­i­sa­tion and inde­pen­dent assess­ment of infor­ma­tion secu­rity processes within the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion scope.

It can pro­vide cus­tomers with addi­tional infor­ma­tion when con­duct­ing sup­plier assess­ments, par­tic­u­larly where tech­nol­ogy plat­forms are inte­grated into impor­tant casino oper­a­tions.

For play­ers, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can also con­tribute to con­fi­dence in the sys­tems sup­port­ing the gam­ing envi­ron­ment. How­ever, it should not be inter­preted as a guar­an­tee against every pos­si­ble cyber inci­dent or secu­rity event. No cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can elim­i­nate all oper­a­tional or tech­no­log­i­cal risks.

Instead, ISO 27001 pro­vides a recog­nised frame­work for man­ag­ing those risks through doc­u­mented processes, con­trols, assess­ment and con­tin­ual improve­ment.

Con­clu­sion

Kon­ami Gam­ing’s announced ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion marks an impor­tant step in the com­pa­ny’s ongo­ing focus on infor­ma­tion secu­rity across its casino sys­tems and iGam­ing oper­a­tions. By plac­ing its infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem sup­port­ing SYNKROS and Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive within an inter­na­tion­ally recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion frame­work, the com­pany is rein­forc­ing the impor­tance of struc­tured risk man­age­ment in an increas­ingly con­nected gam­ing envi­ron­ment.

The sig­nif­i­cance of the devel­op­ment extends beyond the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion itself. Casino tech­nol­ogy increas­ingly depends on inter­con­nected plat­forms that sup­port crit­i­cal oper­a­tional func­tions while online gam­ing cre­ates addi­tional require­ments around data secu­rity, sys­tem gov­er­nance and player con­fi­dence.

The involve­ment of mul­ti­ple Kon­ami depart­ments in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process also high­lights that infor­ma­tion secu­rity is an organ­i­sa­tion-wide respon­si­bil­ity. Main­tain­ing effec­tive con­trols requires coor­di­na­tion between tech­nol­ogy, com­pli­ance, secu­rity, prod­uct devel­op­ment, human resources and oper­a­tional teams.

With the com­pany stat­ing that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will run for three years and be sub­ject to annual sur­veil­lance reviews, the next stage will be con­tin­ued main­te­nance and improve­ment of the under­ly­ing infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem. For Kon­ami Gam­ing and its cus­tomers, that ongo­ing process may be as impor­tant as the ini­tial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion itself.

As gam­ing tech­nol­ogy con­tin­ues to evolve across land-based and online envi­ron­ments, for­mal secu­rity frame­works are likely to remain an impor­tant part of respon­si­ble tech­nol­ogy man­age­ment. Kon­ami Gam­ing’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion adds another layer to its stated approach to secu­rity, pri­vacy and oper­a­tional integrity while pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with an inde­pen­dently assessed frame­work against which rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion secu­rity prac­tices can be eval­u­ated.

FAQs

What is Kon­ami Gam­ing’s ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion?
Kon­ami Gam­ing has announced ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem sup­port­ing the SYNKROS casino man­age­ment sys­tem and Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive.

What does ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion mean?
ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion indi­cates that an organ­i­sa­tion’s infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem has been inde­pen­dently assessed against the require­ments of the applic­a­ble inter­na­tional stan­dard within a defined cer­ti­fi­ca­tion scope.

Who con­ducted Kon­ami Gam­ing’s ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion?
Accord­ing to Kon­ami Gam­ing’s announce­ment, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion assess­ment was con­ducted by Schell­man & Com­pany, LLC.

Which Kon­ami Gam­ing tech­nolo­gies are cov­ered?
The announce­ment states that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sup­ports the infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem asso­ci­ated with SYNKROS and Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive.

Why is ISO 27001 rel­e­vant to casino tech­nol­ogy?
Casino tech­nol­ogy can involve oper­a­tional infor­ma­tion and other busi­ness-crit­i­cal data. ISO 27001 pro­vides a struc­tured frame­work for iden­ti­fy­ing and man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion secu­rity risks.

Does ISO 27001 guar­an­tee that data can­not be breached?
No. ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion does not guar­an­tee that a secu­rity inci­dent can never occur. It demon­strates that an organ­i­sa­tion has estab­lished and main­tains an infor­ma­tion secu­rity man­age­ment sys­tem within the cer­ti­fied scope.

Does the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cover Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive?
Kon­ami Gam­ing’s announce­ment states that ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion applies to the devel­op­ment, deploy­ment and oper­a­tion of Kon­ami Online Inter­ac­tive within the stated cer­ti­fi­ca­tion scope.

Who is Brian Alu?
Brian Alu is Vice Pres­i­dent of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy at Kon­ami Gam­ing. His respon­si­bil­i­ties include the com­pa­ny’s global IT oper­a­tions, secu­rity and related tech­nol­ogy func­tions.

Who is Tom Soukup?
Tom Soukup is Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Sys­tems Prod­uct Offi­cer at Kon­ami Gam­ing. He is respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of com­po­nents of the SYNKROS casino man­age­ment sys­tem.

How long is Kon­ami Gam­ing’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion valid?
Kon­ami Gam­ing has stated that its ISO 27001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is valid for three years, with annual sur­veil­lance reviews begin­ning in 2027.