ISACA releases guide for performing business-relevant assessments

Establishing confidence in IT processes and controls is important, but audit and assurance processes often represent a pain point for business partners. Their perception is that assurance processes consume resources, slow activities and can lead to additional work—all to achieve goals they may not understand.

COBIT 5 for Assurance provides practical guidance for unifying business, IT and assurance professionals around a shared approach when planning and performing assurance reviews. It helps enterprises enable efficient and effective IT assurance activities so they can have a level of comfort in the processes they are following and how they are managing risk. It provides a defined road map based on internationally accepted assurance approaches.

“Enterprises can use COBIT 5 for Assurance to benefit from the consistency, structure, context and vocabulary of the COBIT 5 framework,” said Tony Noble, VP of IT audit at Viacom. “When assurance professionals base their reviews on the same framework used by business and IT managers to maximize the value of information and technology, everyone involved will be using a common language and have a common goal.”

COBIT 5 for Assurance is designed for internal and external auditors, audit committees and regulators, as well as boards and business management. It offers example audit/assurance programs related to change management, risk management and BYOD. This latest guide is part of the COBIT 5 family of publications, which also includes COBIT 5 for Information Security.

“The governance and management of information and technology is a large and complex topic. COBIT helps counter that complexity through relevant, effective and simple-to-use business guidance on specific areas within information systems. COBIT 5 for Assurance provides the assurance-specific perspective of this important business framework, and was designed in response to heavy demand for audit and assurance guidance using the proven, structured approach of COBIT 5,” said Greg Grocholski, international president of ISACA and global business finance director for the Ventures and Business Development unit within The Dow Chemical Company.