Auditing Applications Part 1. This two-part article describes one framework for performing effective audits of framework, plan, & objective applications.

Cloud Computing as an Integral Part of a Modern IT Strategy. Describes real cloud computing project case studies & important strategic decisions for IT managers.

Cloud Risk 10 Principles and a Framework for Assessment. Reviews cloud assessment road map of four principles: vision, visibility, accountability & sustainability.

Database data files should be backed up during cold backup as well as during online backup, using Oracle's Recovery Manager (RMAN) or, in Oracle Database.

Evaluating Access Controls Over Data. This article offers some basic guidance to IT auditors in evaluating the access controls over relevant data files.

Government and commercial organizations rely heavily on the use of information to conduct their business activities.

Effective January 2008, Basel II stipulates the minimum capital requirements that financial institutions must possess in order to manage their risks.

This article shares some of the practical challenges in IT service management (ITSM) and how the ITIL framework can be used to overcome those challenges.

Business continuity management (BCM) is a holistic process to ensure uninterrupted availability of all key business resources required to support critical business activities, whether manual or IT-enabled, in the event of business disruption.

Social networks have opened up a new avenue of communication for millions of people around the world. The major attraction of this technology is the ease with which people can share their personal information with their friends.

A program or project portfolio explains how an organization is implementing its strategy with projects. If product management answers the question “Are we managing the projects correctly?,” then project portfolio management answers the question “Do we have the right projects?”

ISACA identifies, based on the motivations of Internet users visiting social networks, the risk of violating users’ privacy, and to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the control methods used.

There are several IT-related functions that inherently have a rather high degree of risk. Some of those include custom application development, logical access and data transfers. The latter has been growing in volume and risk recently.

In the world of market and credit risk, scenario analysis is used as a part of stress testing. Stress testing is mandated by national regulators and central banks, and takes the form of asking financial institutions to consider the effect of adverse scenarios on their capital and solvency.

One element of IT audit is to audit the IT function. While probably more common in external audit, it certainly could be a part of internal audit, especially in a risk assessment activity or in designing an IT function.