5 questions you have every right to ask your trip registration supplier about your data

Your trip registration system is the brain behind your taxi. And that brain remembers more than you might think. Where your regular customers go. Which routes your school transport runs every day. Credit card details and staff records.

When choosing a system, most taxi operators look at features and price. Makes sense. But what happens to all that data matters just as much. Bart, Information Security Officer at Cabman, lists the questions you should ask every supplier. And which answers should make you dig a little deeper.

Why this matters

"A taxi company often handles more sensitive information than it realises. Think of where a VIP customer is travelling to, the patterns of daily school transport, but also credit card details and staff records. If that data ends up out in the open, your reputation is on the line. And you risk fines."

Information security comes down to three things. Your data stays confidential. It is available when you need it. And nobody can tamper with it.

"An app that sends a GPS location from A to B isn't that hard to build these days. The difference lies in what you don't see on the surface: what happens to that data afterwards."

Where is my data stored?

It starts with a simple question: where is my data actually stored? Many operators don't know and that's not surprising. You see an app or an onboard computer, and the rest happens somewhere in the background. Still, the answer matters. You want to know that your data is stored securely.

A good supplier will tell you without hesitation. If the answer stays vague, that's a reason to ask more questions.

At Cabman, everything runs in secure data centres. Bart explains how your data gets there: "The data is already encrypted on the onboard computer or in the app, before it is sent to our servers. If someone intercepts the signal, all they see is unreadable characters."

Who has access to it?

The more people who can get to your data, the greater the chance that something goes wrong. So the second question is: who can actually access it?

In less professionally set up systems, Bart still sometimes comes across a single shared admin account that lets several people access everything. "That's asking for trouble," he says.

Cabman does things differently. "We work on the principle of least privilege. Everyone only has access to what they strictly need for their job. So a colleague in marketing cannot and is not allowed to access the trip registration database."

What happens when there's an outage?

Trips that aren't recorded properly, a dispatch centre that can't reach the data: a single outage can throw your whole day off. And that costs money straight away. So ask your supplier what happens when something fails. Are there backups? And does another server take over if one goes down?

If everything runs on a single server and there's no plan for outages, you're taking a risk. At Cabman, the systems run in secure, redundant data centres. "If a server goes down, another one takes over," Bart explains.

How do you deal with human error?

You can have the best technology in place, and things can still go wrong. Many data breaches start with someone clicking the wrong link. "No matter how good thetechnology is, people remain the weakest link," says Bart.

Does a supplier only talk about servers and software? Then ask how their staff are trained aswell. At Cabman, everyone from support to management receives regular training on cybersecurity and phishing. "We also send our own staff fake phishing emails to see if they're alert," says Bart.

How do you prove your processes are secure?

Every supplier says their system is secure. The question is whether anyone else has checked. According to Bart, the reaction to that question tells you enough: "If a supplier starts to hesitate or says 'just trust us, it's fine', alarm bells should start ringing."

A good supplier will readily show you that its security has been independently assessed. Cabman is certified to ISO/IEC 27001, and you can simply request a copy of the certificate. We also have penetration tests carried out regularly. Ethical hackers then try to break into our systems, to prove that our security holds up.

ISO 27001 in plain English

ISO 27001 is an international standard for information security. Independent experts check whether an organisation has identified and covered all of its risks. It isn't a one-off check, but an ongoing process.

"It's not a checklist you tick off once and then put away in a drawer. Independent experts turn our entire organisation inside out. They check how we write software, how we handle passwords and what we do when the power goes out."

In practice, it comes down to this: plenty of companies say they're secure. With ISO 27001,Cabman has that objectively verified.

Peace of mind

"We make sure taxi operators can do what they're good at: keeping cars on the road and customers happy. We take care of everything behind the scenes."

Since 2002,Cabman has specialised in hardware and software solutions for taxi transport,school transport and airport transport. More than 1,200 companies and 35,000 vehicles work with our systems. We hold RDW, ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001 certification.

Curious how we protect the brain behind your taxi? Request our ISO 27001 certificate or schedule a call.

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