The Evolution of the IT Ecosystem

The total number of active controls in an enterprise is always extremely high. Part of the normal functioning of any process or activity is to define an objective, map the rules to achieve it, put them into practice and then constantly check their alignment with the defined objective.

With smart agriculture using soil and crop data gaining traction around the world, the importance of data management is also being increasingly recognized. As in any other business, the products produced (in this case, crops in agriculture) need to be safe and environmentally and socially friendly.

After several major accounting scandals, the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 was enacted in the United States to protect investors from fraud, improve reliability of financial reporting and restore investor confidence.

The practice of audit is age-old, though the many models and methods have evolved over time. The audit community has faced significant challenges, ranging from misalignment with auditees to ignorance about changing risk areas with technology advances.

One analysis of the word “risk” and its impact on risk management processes uses RISK as an acronym for reasoning, intelligence, strategy and knowledge.

Sometimes known as the Stone Dragon, the Great Wall of China is one of the world’s greatest engineering wonders. This masterpiece can be seen from space and was built as a series of fortifications over several hundred years and across the historical northern borders of Imperial China.

The leaders and policymakers of nations around the world are working on building national digital identity systems and frameworks.

From the early days of electronic data processing (EDP) to modern cybersecurity, IS audits have come a long way. The landscape around information systems has been changing, but as in any journey, an eye on the rearview mirror enables better decision-making and safer travel forward.

It has long been the assumption that, once built, all computer systems are Turing machines—that is, devices that perform one small, deterministic step at a time—and are, therefore, deterministic in nature

In February 2016, the world witnessed a sophisticated cyberheist in which the computer terminals of Bangladesh Bank, which interfaced with the communication system of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), were compromised through spear phishing emails.

Organizations must review cybersecurity threats and attack vectors, understand the importance of the incident response plan (IRP), review response activities, conduct tabletop exercises, analyze the exercises to determine areas for improvement, manage reporting and conduct IRP maintenance.

These days, cyberadversaries are coming up with different kinds of capabilities and objectives behind each of their new cyberattacks, which has forced organizations to do a deeper, more introspective evaluation of their existing cyberdefense mechanisms.

Fintech organizations that provide payment solutions to merchants, banks and financial institutions have a strict requirement to maintain security and regulatory compliance.

Agile is on trend these days. Even the people who opposed agile in the past have now jumped on the bandwagon and actively campaign for going Agile while not always understanding what that means—and often inserting the same nonagile obstacles they have been practicing into their version of Agile audit.

Managing cybersecurity and technology risk is a major challenge for virtual banks. Although cyberattacks and a lack of system resilience can be detrimental for both traditional and virtual banks, they arguably have a greater impact on the latter.