Cobit Framework

This article makes up Chapter 1 of the free, open access book titled, Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology, by John Gallaugher. Please ensure that you read the entire Chapter 1 of the book consisting of 3 parts (Part 1 Introduction; Part 2 Don’t Guess, Gather Data; and Part 3 Moving Forward).

The design and implementation and objectives of company controls are not adequate to meet the control objectives. The control environment control objective is ineffective. This control objective lacks a written policy on ethical conduct, is lacking oversight from the board of directors and audit committee, lacks a consistent style and philosophy from management, and lacks a strong commitment to competence. The risk assessment control objective is effective but lacks any antifraud program and controls. The information and communication control is ineffective. A virus has been detected and is affecting the files of the company. This control is lacking a strong IT department. The general controls financial reporting control objective is effective but is weak in detecting or preventing material misstatement. The monitoring control objective is ineffective; this control has need of an internal auditor.

Over the past few years growth, of WW has not increased and it has remained stagnant due to the slow growth of the economy. In order to improve the growth of the organization, a few IT organizational changes are required that will help streamline the internal processes for WW to improve the

COBIT stands for Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (Damianides, 2004). It is a set best control framework which was developed by Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) and IT Government Institute in 1996. COBIT has been employed by companies which need to be compliant with SOX as well as being used by the Auditors who do assess the control features. COBIT’s approximately 300 control objectives are usually grouped into Executive summary, Framework, Control Objectives, Control Practice, Management Guidelines, and Audit Guidelines which constitutes the six BOBIT components. COBIT’s

Like many of its most profitable competitors, Alcan has grown quickly through insightful series of mergers, acquisitions and rapid product development and launch strategies throughout the major markets it sells into. The company has settled on a highly decentralized divisional business model that has to the point of the case study served them well. Their IT systems are showing signs of massive overduplication of expense, with a $500M level of spending on enterprise applications with SAP being the majority. There are further signs of massive waste in their highly diversified organizational structure. There are 400 systems in the company all dedicated to pricing, a massive duplication of costs, time and effort on the part of IT across the five divisions. There are also over 1,000 concurrent enterprise-class IT systems being used throughout the company at any point in time. Conservatively speaking the company is spending 20% of their total enterprise software spend on maintenance costs alone. This is forcing the CIO, Robert Ouelette, to re-evaluate both the organizational structure and IT systems supporting it. The goals of this analysis are to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the existing application or IT management structure. An analysis of the proposal by Robert Ouelette is also provided along with an assessment of it potential effectiveness in solving the challenges is facing today.

Financial management for IT services (ITSM) is an IT service management process area for control of expenses. Also, many financial managers strive to save money by scrutinizing the cost of IT. For instance, ITIL offers a suite of efficiency driving tools which can help businesses identify where they can offer huge cost management. With ITIL management can be configured to implement cost reduction strategies to reduce cost. Therefore the aim of a financial manager is to promote IT services is to give accurate and cost effective stewardship of IT assets and stewardship of all IT assets and resources used in providing IT services. The IT depart is used to planning, controlling, and recovering plan, control and recover costs expended in providing that the IT service negotiates and agrees on the service-level agreement (SLA) (Conger, Dattero, Galup, & Quan, 2009).

There aim is to set a guidelines and standards that set a common approach for the company and provide practical guidance for all employees.

Phase 3 tasks 1 Components of technology systems Questions 1-4 for Group project, part 2:

This portfolio focus on what I have learned during the whole IT Strategy and Control paper, a critical reflection of this paper would be provided. This reflection includes the key points, support reference and the demonstration of my own understanding about the paper itself and all of my personal understandings are based on the learning outcome of this paper. In the first part of this portfolio, I would discuss all the key IT Operations Management framework which have been introduced in the paper, the analysis of the processes based on my own understanding would be given. In the second part, analyze processes required for aligning IT infrastructure and operations with the business goals of an organization would be talked about, and I would focus a business organization which has been mentioned in the caselets as a sample. In the third part, some critical evaluate operational IT organizations and their processes against the studied models would be listed and analyzed. In the last part, the recommendations and analysis of my own would be given against those organizations (caselets) which have some problems and current issues arising from the implementation of the IT framework.

ABSTRACT: Information Technology General Controls (ITGCs), a fundamental category of internal controls, provide an overall foundation for reliance on any information produced by a system. Since the relation between ITGCs and the information produced by an organization’s various application programs is indirect, understanding how ITGCs interact and affect an auditor’s risk assessment is often challenging for students. This case helps students assess overall ITGC risk within an organization’s information systems. Students identify

All these factors are creating new challenges and new opportunities for businesses of all kinds and for the public sector. Adapting to the volatility and change is crucially dependent on, and in many cases driven by, IT. But to successfully meet these challenges and grasp these opportunities, you must focus on what you do best, not on becoming systems experts. Yet at the same time you must be 100 per cent certain that your IT support is efficient, cost effective and totally tuned to your needs.

In order to effectively implement security governance, the Corporate Governance Task Force (CGTF) recommends that organizations follow an established framework, such as the IDEAL framework from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute. This framework, which is described in the document “Information Security Governance: Call to Action,” defines the responsibilities of (1) the board of directors or trustees, (2) the senior organizational executive (i.e., CEO), (3) executive team members, (4) senior managers, and (5) all employees and users. This important document can be found at the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) Web site at www.isaca.org/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm?ContentID=34997.

The researcher focused on managing IT assets only because past and existing manual systems had too many loopholes which resulted in the organization losing valuable IT assets due to theft and or abuse by employees. Unlike other tangible assets of the organization IT assets have a shorter life span and often switch many hands within a short period of time hence difficult in most cases to trace their whereabouts.

Frenzel (2004) claimed that to be successful, a firm’s IT management team must take action on the following critical areas: business management issues; strategic and competitive issues; planning and implementation concerns; and operational items. If for any reason, the organisation experiences difficulties in the above areas, the manager will need to set goals and objectives to overcome and prevent these issues.

A Report submitted to Prof. J.M. Shah for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the subject Information Systems for Management under NMIMS University