The March release of ISACA’s Digital Trust Ecosystem Framework made it an opportune time for a recent “Ask Me Anything” discussion with Mark Thomas, a DTEF architect and new inductee to the ISACA Hall of Fame.
The Ask Me Anything discussion, which took place on ISACA’s Engage online community, included discussion of DTEF’s benefits, how to learn more about its implementation, potential connection points with other frameworks, and more.
“When we think about digital interactions, there are basically three entities here: 1) The service/product consumer, 2) The service/product provider, and 3) What we call the ‘Proxy Technology,’” wrote Thomas as part of the discussion. “I may trust your organization in a digital interaction, but I may not trust the technology. Alternatively, I may trust the technology, but not your organization. Therefore, when you are looking at your digital trust initiatives, think about all three of those entities. We spent a lot of time considering how all of these play a role when we developed the Trust Factors in the framework.”
Much of the conversation also centered on the relationship between DTEF and COBIT.
“My position is that digital trust is an outcome of good governance, cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, and so on,” Thomas wrote. “When you are adopting any practice, whether it is from COBIT, TOGAF, ITIL, or any other framework, think about how the outcomes of those practices influence or enable trust with your customers, consumers and users.”
Thomas added that COBIT remains a valuable framework in the governance space.
“COBIT is, and certainly should, be THE framework for GEIT while DTEF is taking input from COBIT as well as other frameworks and looking at these through the lens of digital trust,” Thomas wrote. “You might have heard me say in the past that COBIT has always been my framework to manage frameworks.”
Catch up on the entire Ask Me Anything thread on Engage here.
Submit topic and guest ideas for upcoming Ask Me Anything sessions to volunteer@isaca.org.
