COBIT’s Five Principles 1. Meeting Stakeholders Needs: Identify all stakeholders affected by IT and how IT provides business value and security. Include all internal as well as external stakeholders. 2. Covering the Enterprise End-to-End: The framework should be inclusive of everyone within the organization: top to bottom, all assets, no exceptions. 3. Applying a Single Integrated Framework: Set the rules and stick to them. 4. Enabling a Holistic Approach: This principle recognizes that there are a lot of interacting parts of an organization and this framework helps to manage that complexity. 5. Separating IT Governance from IT Management: • IT Governance: Ensures that stakeholder needs, conditions and options are evaluated to determine balanced, agreed-on enterprise objectives to be achieved; sets direction through prioritization and decision-making; and monitors performance and compliance against agreed-on direction and objectives. • IT Management: Plans, builds, runs and monitors activities in alignment with the direction set by the governance body to achieve the enterprise objectives. COBIT’s Four Domains COBIT’s four domains are where the functional meat of your IT Governance program lies. The domains should be treated as a set of recurring, cyclical tasks that are continually revisited to ensure that IT is aligned with changing goals and ever more concerning security threats. 1. Align, Plan and Organize: The first step is to take a detailed look at your existing IT systems and infrastructure and make sure that they align with your business goals and risk threshold. 2. Build, Acquire and Implement: The implementation and maintenance of IT should be guided by the informed, intelligent review conducted in the first domain. 3. Deliver, Service and Support: Track IT support and delivery and gather data on the type, frequency and severity of support issues. 4. Monitor, Evaluate and Assess: Continually monitor the status of IT systems, evaluate in terms of business and security goals, assess risk, and adjust as needed. The full COBIT framework dives down to a very detailed level. It’s worth the effort to review the varied frameworks and adopt one that appears to best match your bank’s internal and regulatory requirements. What to Keep in Mind When Developing an IT Governance Program Whichever model you chose, or if you chose to design your own, remember these important points: • IT Governance is not IT Management. • IT Governance is the process that ensures the effective, efficient, and safe use of IT to enable an organization to achieve its goals. • IT Governance is top-down and is initiated by the Board and Senior Management — but everyone in the organization has some level of responsibility. • IT Governance Frameworks provide the guidance to implement your own governance program. • Governance is a cyclical process that requires ongoing evaluation, monitoring, and review. Mike Gilmore is the Chief Compliance Officer of RESULTS Technology and a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) with more than 30 years of experience in the banking industry. RESULTS Technology provides IT services to community banks across the Midwest. In his role as CCO, Mike provides compliance and risk assessments, audit and exam support and policy documentation. He can be reached at mgilmore@resultstechnology.com. …IT Governance can be defined as the processes that ensure the effective, efficient, and safe use of IT to enable an organization to achieve its goals. 33
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