IT 7833 : IT Policy, Strategy and Governance
IT Professional Toolkit
Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) is the best practice and framework of IT Governance. It help in understanding and managing the risk and benefits that associated with IT (IT Governance Institute,) . COBIT also help bridge the gaps amongst business requirements, control needs and technical issues. It is a control model to meet the needs of IT governance and ensure the integrity of information and information systems. COBIT defines IT activities in a generic process model within four domains such as Plan and Organize, Acquire and Implement, Deliver and Support, and Monitor and Evaluate. To govern IT effectively, it is important to appreciate the activities and risks within IT that need to be managed ( IT Governance Institute,).
The component of COBIT (Seeram, 2012):
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Framework - Organize IT governance objectives and good practices by IT domains and processes, and links them to business requirements
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Process Descriptions - A reference process model and common language for everyone in an organization. The processes map to responsibility areas of plan, build, run and monitor.
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Control Objectives - Provide a complete set of high-level requirements to be considered by management for effective control of each IT process.
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Management Guidelines - Help assign responsibility, agree on objectives, measure performance, and illustrate interrelationship with other processes
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Maturity Models - Assess maturity and capability per process and helps to address gaps.
The benefit of COBIT (ISACA, 2014):
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Maintain high-quality information to support business decisions
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Achieve strategic goals and realize business benefits through the effective and innovative use of IT
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Achieve operational excellence through reliable, efficient application of technology Maintain IT-related risk at an acceptable level
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Optimize the cost of IT services and technology
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Support compliance with relevant laws, regulations, contractual agreements and policies.
COBIT provides a comprehensive framework that assists enterprises in achieving their objectives for the governance and management of enterprise IT. The newest version of COBIT is COBIT 5 that released by ISACA. COBIT 5 are the incorporation of the ISO 38500 model for the corporate governance for IT. It is aimed to provide an end to end business view of IT governance that reflects the role of IT in creating value for enterprises (Seeram, 2012). COBIT 5 will help the enterprise to create optimal value from information technology by maintaining a balance between realizing benefits and optimizing risk levels and resource use. " COBIT 5 enables IT to be governed and managed in a holistic manner for the entire enterprise, taking into account the full end-to-end business and IT functional areas of responsibility, considering the IT-related interests of internal and external stakeholders" (ISACA, 2012).
Governance & Management (Seeram, 2012):
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Governance ensures that enterprise objectives are achieved by evaluating stakeholder needs, conditions and options; setting direction through prioritization and decision making; and monitoring performance, compliance and progress against agreed-on direction and objectives (EDM).
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Management plans, builds, runs and monitors activities in alignment with the direction set by the governance body to achieve the enterprise objectives (PBRM).