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According to a recent global survey of more than 3,700 IT professionals who are members of ISACA, nearly half of respondents’ enterprises (44 percent) are planning to increase their IT-related investments selectively in the next 12 months, based on expected contribution to business value. The survey also showed that 74 percent of executive teams consider information and technology to be very important to the delivery of the enterprise’s strategy and vision.

COBIT 5 provides globally accepted principles, practices, analytical tools and models designed to help business and IT leaders maximize trust in, and value from, their enterprise’s information and technology assets. This update is the result of a four-year initiative led by a global task force and has been reviewed by more than 95 experts worldwide. To date, more than 16,000 professionals have preregistered to receive a copy. The previous version of COBIT has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

“The advance interest in COBIT 5 has been overwhelming. It is clear that enterprises everywhere are aggressively seeking guidance on how to manage and ensure value from the growing mountain of information and increasingly complex technologies they are grappling with,” said Derek Oliver, Ph.D., CISA, CISM, CRISC, CITP, FBCS, FISM, MInstISP, and co-chair of the COBIT 5 Task Force. “Information is the currency of the 21st century, and COBIT helps enterprises effectively govern and manage this critical asset.”

How COBIT 5 Is Used

COBIT 5 can be tailored to meet an enterprise’s specific business model, technology environment, industry, location and corporate culture. Because of its open design, it can be applied to meet needs related to:

– Information security

– Risk management

– Governance and management of enterprise IT

– Assurance activities

– Legislative and regulatory compliance

– Financial processing or CSR reporting

According to the ISACA survey, in the past 12 months:

48% of responding enterprises experienced project overruns
41% experienced a high cost of IT with a low or unknown return on investment
38% said there was a disconnect between business and IT strategies
22% experienced a security breach
21% reported challenges related to mobile device security

“COBIT 5 offers a much-needed common vocabulary and set of processes to enlist stakeholders from across the organization—not just IT—in considering the issues and impact of key business and technology issues such as cloud computing, growth of mobile devices and BYOD (bring your own device), data privacy and cybersecurity threats,” said John Lainhart, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, CRISC, CIPP/G, past international president of ISACA and co-chair of the COBIT 5 Task Force. “Most people wouldn’t venture into a major storm without protective gear like an umbrella. Yet, that’s what enterprises do every day when they leave their technology assets unprotected.”

Five Principles and Seven Enablers

This significant update of the COBIT framework simplifies governance challenges with just five principles and seven enablers. The principles are: 1) Meeting Stakeholder Needs, 2) Covering the Enterprise End-to-end, 3) Applying a Single, Integrated Framework, 4) Enabling a Holistic Approach, and 5) Separating Governance From Management. The enablers, which help achieve enterprise goals, are: Processes; Principles, Policies and Frameworks; Organisational Structures; People, Skills and Competencies; Culture, Ethics and Behaviour; Services, Infrastructure and Applications; and Information.

The new version of COBIT is also designed to integrate other approaches and standards, including TOGAF, PMBOK, Prince2, COSO, ITIL, PCI DSS, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Basel III.

COBIT 5 is available to all as a free-of-charge download at www.isaca.org/cobit. ISACA also today released COBIT 5: Enabling Processes (free to ISACA members and US $134 for nonmembers) and COBIT 5 Implementation (free to ISACA members and US $50 for nonmembers), which help framework users apply the guidance. Print editions of all three guides are available for purchase from the ISACA Bookstore (www.isaca.org/bookstore). Full survey results are available at http://COBIT5presskit.isaca.org.