CONTROL CAN BE BEAUTIFUL: Podcast interview with Gary Hardy, IT consultant, board member of ISACA and major contributor to the CobiT initiative

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Sometimes, control can be beautiful ... especially in the complex (and expensive) arena of IT governance. And that is when CobiT -- the Control objects for IT -- can be beautiful, too, helping you to streamline and improve your processes for managing IT service delivery. And not many people understand this better than Gary Hardy, IT consultant and contributor to the original initiative that created CobiT.

CobiT was established by the nonprofit IT Governance Institute (ITGI), formed to help business leaders "ensure that IT is aligned with the business and delivers value, its performance is measured, its resources properly allocated, and its risks mitigated." Although CobiT predated it, interest in CobiT grew considerably after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was enacted in 2002, following the very-public reality checks involving Enron, MCI, and others. CobiT is often used as a framework in which corporations can address the demands of SOX, and the processes it introduces include how enterprises:
- acquire or develop application software
- acquire technology Infrastructure
- develop and maintain policies and procedures
- install and test application software and technology infrastructure, and more.

Want to know more about CobiT? Tune in to this educational podcast, and spend a little time getting to know how control can be beautiful for your enterprise.

Resources

Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA)

IT Governance Institute (ITGI)

http://www.itwinners.com/Home.htm

Bio

Gary Hardy is a Computer Science graduate with 30 years experience in the IT industry, originally as a systems developer and project manager, and for the past 24 years as a specialist in IT audit, risk management, and performance improvement. He has been an Internal Computer Audit Manager, and has held Director positions with Deloitte & Touche and Arthur Andersen and also with one of the UK's leading IT security companies Zergo, now Baltimore. He has consulted with a wide range of companies in the UK and overseas, and led several major IT security projects for the European Commission. He has also acted as Project Monitor to the UK Department of Energy. Gary coordinates the IT Governance Special Interest Group for the Impact Programme, one of the UK's leading forums for IT Directors and CIOs. He has been an active member for 25 years with ISACA, the world's leading organization focused on Information Systems Control. He has been a board member and has held several leadership positions within Europe. In particular, he helped initiate and has been a major contributor throughout ISACA's CobiT® initiative, and serves as advisor to the IT Governance Institute. He helps companies use the CobiT materials to implement an IT Governance framework and improved IT Management processes, and as a tool for identifying performance improvements. He is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars, and runs training courses on IT Governance.

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer