ISACA – Business Lunch

Tomorrow i am invited by Paul O’Brien, a director at Solute Consulting, for the „Val IT business lunch“ organized by ISACA. As i have never been exposed to that organisation in the past i tried to find out something on the internet which i found quite hard.

The Brisbane Chapter website doesn’t say anything in the About ISACA section, the ISACA homepage for Asia Pac has a flash introduction that is displaying a keyboard, scrolling a couple of buzz words from top to bottm around IT Governance, Risk Management, Security, CoBit and after shoing some certification that might be recognized in the world it comes to a point that actually isnt one, but at least the full name of the organization „Information Systems Audit and Control Association“. Aha, and further on ‚ Serving IT Governance professionals‘. Great that i was able to find that out.

Next Step is to check the super ‚.org‘ domain, and lets see what we have there, and this site looks content rich and in the Overview section we are getting down to the detail, as in the 4th paragraph we are able to understand what they do for us:

Since its inception, ISACA has become a pace-setting global organization for information governance, control, security and audit professionals. Its IS auditing and IS control standards are followed by practitioners worldwide. Its research pinpoints professional issues challenging its constituents. Its Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) certification is recognized globally and has been earned by more than 60,000 professionals since inception. The Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification uniquely targets the information security management audience and has been earned by more than 9,000 professionals. The Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT) designation promotes the advancement of professionals who wish to be recognised for their IT governance-related experience and knowledge and has been earned by more than 200 professionals. It publishes a leading technical journal in the information control field, the Information Systems Control Journal. It hosts a series of international conferences focusing on both technical and managerial topics pertinent to the IS assurance, control, security and IT governance professions. Together, ISACA and its affiliated IT Governance Institute lead the information technology control community and serve its practitioners by providing the elements needed by IT professionals in an ever-changing worldwide environment.

So bottom line, an organisation that provides standards in the fields of IT Governance that are followed by a lot of Professionals in the world. I like standards so lets get into it tomorrow and have Paul explain in a small interview what ISACA does in his words and what are the benefits for us as Project Managers as most of the projects we are doing at some stage might apply how IT works (especially the big change projects) and it governs itself.

A, on a sideline, John Thorp will be there at the Business Lunch, a fellow with 45 years of experience in the information management field and author of „The Information Paradox“ published in 1999, and we can talk about „Value Governance, Investment Management and Portfolio Management“. What i am looking for is to understand the major link between the three.