Configuration Management Horror Stories From An IT Auditor

Joint meeting between The CMSG And Information Risk Management & Audit (IRMA) specialist groups.

Thursday 19th July 2007

Presented by John Mitchell PhD, MBA, CEng, CITP, FBCS, MBCS, FIIA, MIIA, CISA, QiCA, CFE Managing Director, LHS Business Control, Editor BCS IRMA Journal

Slides from this event

Synopsis

Things that go bump in the night.

The main role of the IT auditor is to provide assurance to senior management that the company’s IT assets are well controlled and are delivering value for money. A secondary role is to provide advice on control issues during the development of new business solutions. As IT is so complex a typical IT auditor will usually be an ex-IT professional with an associated audit qualification.

Because configuration management is so essential to the delivery of the IT service and the availability of the service is so important to the end-user, the IT auditor will carefully examine supporting assumptions and calculations relating to the likely effectiveness, reliability and resilience of the proposed service.

This session will give examples of some of the configuration management horror stories encountered by the speaker during his years as an IT auditor and some suggestions as to how they could possibly have been avoided. The concept of “co-active” auditing will be proposed and how it can benefit the CM professional, the auditor and senior management. People of a nervous disposition should not attend!

Speaker Bio

John Mitchell is an international authority on corporate governance, risk management and control self-assessment and the impact of regulatory and compliance issues on the delivery of corporate services. He has presented papers on these subjects at many international conferences and holds ISACA’s prestigious John Kuyers award for best conference contributor. He has been an expert adviser in a number of UK commercial and criminal cases and has been featured in a major British computing publication as the ‘IT Detective’. He is a past member of the BCS Council and its Security Expert Panel. He is currently editor of IRMA’s award winning Journal and has previously been its chairman, membership secretary and events organiser. His doctorate, in risk analysis techniques, was awarded by City University. His MBA in financial control was awarded, with distinction, by Middlesex University.

The presentation takes place at 18.00 at the BCS London Office, 5 Southampton Street. The meeting is free to members of the CM SG & the IRMA SG. You may apply to join IRMA or the CM SG at the meeting.

Places must be pre-booked for security and catering purposes - please use Online Registration form.