Cybersecurity is one of the most alarming issues in today’s era. Organizations need a robust cybersecurity program to ensure the protection of confidential data. However, according to Cybrint, 95% of cybersecurity , breaches are caused due to human error.
In this blog, we will discuss about a few of the basic human errors that arises cybersecurity issues in organizations.

1. Phishing – A Social Engineering Attack

Phishing is a tactic used to persuade humans to disclose confidential information. This mainly includes passwords, social security numbers, credit card numbers or any other private data.
For phishing, attackers usually practice a combination of social engineering and deception. Different methods used by attackers include email, texts, phone calls, URL directs and even social media platforms.

2. Scan and Exploit – Human Failure

New ways of causing cybersecurity breaches include scanning. QR codes are sent to users and are said to be of high importance. Once, the code has been scanned, the hacker can easily get access to the confidential data of the user.
Due to vulnerable cybersecurity infrastructure, IT components like web servers, databases, and cloud apps can be easily misconfigured. Hackers take advantage of these security holes. Thus, easily access to the confidential data and cause a cybersecurity breach.

3. Credential Thefts – Unauthorized Access

Credential thefts lead to unauthorized access to secure data and IT systems. Hackers use various ways to steal credentials:
Shoulder Surfing – Stealing someone’s credentials by watching someone typing their password
Phishing – Tricking someone into handing over their credentials into a spoof login page.
Social Engineering – Deceiving someone into giving away their credentials by pretending to be someone else. It can be done via social media, calls, emails or other communication methods like help desk or texts.

4. Poor Password Hygiene

61% of breaches are due to stolen passwords. Passwords are easily compromised for the following reasons:
– Users use simple and guessable passwords like 1234 and password.
– 45% of users reuse their passwords on other services as well.
– Users don’t change their passwords for a long period of time.
– Users share their passwords with their colleagues or friends.
If passwords get into the hands of a culprit, they can be easily misused causing cybersecurity breaches that would be a huge loss for individuals as well as organizations.

Addressing Human Error in Cybersecurity

It is significant to address human errors in order to minimize cybersecurity threats. The following recommendations will secure your organization into falling for a cybersecurity attack:

1. Cybersecurity awareness training

Training and awareness programs that entails knowledge regarding, “How to avoid human errors leading to cybersecurity breaches.” Educating the workforce is significant if organizations want to minimize human errors in cybersecurity.
Moreover, regular cybersecurity trainings keep the employees up to date with the latest cybersecurity trends and threats.

2. Access rights and privileges

It is risky to provide access to all the files to all the employees of an organization. Security policy implementation is required to restrict access to confidential files. This will help to prevent data theft from inside the organization.
Nevertheless, organizations need to proactively offer access to the file they need to do their work effectively. However, if there is a need files can be access by employees for the time being so they can get their jobs done.

3. Regular data backups

It is important to ensure that employees are backing up their data on their devices. In case of an incident, they would have a backup. Any data stored in the cloud should also be backed up in a hard drive regularly to ensure business operations runs smoothly. Data backups ensure business continuity even if the resources are taken offline by any cybersecurity attack

Let Us Make Your Cybersecurity Program a Success

It’s high time for organizations to prepare for cybersecurity threats. It can disrupt the continuity of an entire organization and cause millions of monetary losses.
With more than a decade experience, our consultants can help you establish and implement a successful cybersecurity program. Business Beam provides Technology Governance Outsourcing to help your organization. Additional services include Executive Advisory, Strategy Alignment, Service Management Planning, and Rollout Support.
Through these, we ensure your system’s success. We would be glad to hear from you and help your organization throughout their journey of success. Get in touch with us now.

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Information Technology Service Management, or ITSM, is the implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of a business and its customers. ITSM is invaluable, especially as it improves services’ efficiency, manages changes, reduces operational costs, and ensures fair accountability.

Unfortunately, not many organizations succeed in achieving their ITSM goals because their implementations are faulty. Let’s take a look at six major reasons behind this inefficiency.

Reason 1) A Short-Sighted Approach

For an ITSM implementation to succeed, it must establish long-term business process improvements. For this purpose, organizations need effective ITSM solutions that are well supported by efficient business process controls.

However, in an attempt to speed up the process, organizations may opt for quick fixes. Sometimes, these fixes do not include the implementation of ITSM frameworks and best practices like ITIL or ISO 20000.
Moreover, more emphasis remains on ‘technology’ rather than on the ‘process’ component. Therefore, implementing tools without optimizing process controls results in the lack of the ability to address real time challenges of your organization.

A short-sighted approach may help resolve the symptoms of your problem. However, its causes may be left undetected. Moreover, you can expect your organization to face new issues without a formal ITSM framework in place.

Reason 2) Lack of Understanding Requirements and ITSM Maturity

Effective ITSM implementation requires a good understanding of what’s required and the organization’s current ITSM maturity level.

It is imperative to identify stakeholder groups and gather and understand their functional needs, pain points, and technical needs. This can be a challenge considering their busy schedule. However, their input is an important part of the requirements documentation.

Similarly, implementing ITSM first requires in-depth gap assessment to uncover the current state of ITSM practices.
That way, a formal strategy can be planned accordingly to achieve the desired future state.

Reason 3) Data-Related Mistakes

ITSM processes are highly dependent on the availability of accurate and integrated data. However, it is common for data-related mistakes to dramatically decrease the performance of your ITSM implementation.
Examples of such mistakes include:

• Underestimating Administrative Overhead – Organizations may fail to factor the time required for loading data into their system. Combined with the lack of a maintenance and administration plan and accountability clarity, this mistake can be problematic.
• Including Garbage – Without effective data cleaning, poor quality data can become part of the organization’s ITSM. As a result, the quality of data in other parts of the system will be compromised. Moreover, cleaning this mess will be more costly and will demand more resources.
• Lack of Planning for Change – Business and IT will constantly change, so your ITSM needs to be flexible. Without support for re-organization, growth and mergers, the system will fail.

Reason 4) Overlooked Organizational Change Management

Organizational Change Management, – i.e. the actions an organization takes to alter one of its major components – is essential for ITSM. Without a consistent drive for successful adoption and usage of change, it will be difficult and costly for the organization to shift to ITSM.

Therefore, organizations and consultants need to address the impact of ITSM to the people, culture, processes, etc. People especially tend to be overlooked, which is why organizations face complaints and naysaying. Because of these, even highly efficient ITSM implementations can be deemed failures.

Reason 5) Lack of Continual Service Improvement and Governance

Implementing IT service management systems is not a “one and done” deal. While you may celebrate the success of the systems and their results, you need to think ahead.

Your strategy will change over time to meet current and future challenges. As a result, the organization should aim to continually improve process capability and maturity. Therefore, a plan for continual service improvement is a must.

Similarly, governance is essential for implementation. An established governance system helps define roles, responsibilities, accountabilities and a direction for aligning service management goals with enterprise level goals.

Reason 6) Lack of Focus on Impact on the Business and its Customers

Organizations may place too much emphasis on IT performance metrics rather than those related to those measuring impact on the business and its customers/users. This, again, causes the value from the implementation to become less, which in turn leads to deeming it a failure.

In the case of KPIs, your focus should be on those which impact the business customers/users such as network downtime and incident escalations.

Another thing a business should focus on is operational efficiency through process improvement. In particular, it should assess its ability to run, grow, and innovate after the implementation.

Let Us Make Your ITSM Implementation a Success

With an experience of almost two decades, our consultants can help you realize the benefits of ITSM implementation.
In addition to using tried and tested best practices and frameworks, Business Beam provides Organizational Change Management additional services including Executive Advisory, Strategy Alignment, Service Management Planning, and Rollout Support. Through these, we ensure your system’s success.

If you have a vision in mind, we would love to hear it and further refine it to become an efficient system at your organization. So, do not hesitate to get in touch with us.



The post Your ITSM May Be Failing and Here’s Why appeared first on Business Beam.

According to Gartner, Chief Audit Executives have identified IT governance as one of the tops risks for organizations in2021. This is understandable considering the changes COVID-19 brought on in the previous year.
Organisations are now working hard to accelerate their digital roadmaps and adopt new technologies to support the changing business environments and expectations of their customers.
In addition to managing day to day operations, it is important that the relevant risks and resources are optimized, and maximum benefits are delivered to Customers. This means there is a need to govern and manage Technology in the most efficient way.

What is IT Governance?

a href=” https://businessbeam.com/blog/it-service-management/difference-between-it-governance-and-it-service-management”>IT governance is an important aspect of corporate governance. It uses, manages, and optimises IT to ensure organisations achieve goals and objectives. It further provides a structure for aligning IT with business strategy. That way, enterprises can achieve measurable results.
With effective IT governance, enterprises can address major pain points including:

• Lack of alignment of performance goals and objectives
• Lack of performance management KPIs and metrics, and/or lack of formal reviews against them
• Irregular assessment of risks
• Irregular review of IT strategies, policies, and procedures
• Lack of documented policies and procedures
• Not effectively following documented policies and procedures
• High number of non-compliances during internal or external audits
• Delays while responding or closing non-compliances
• Focus on tools while neglecting the processes and people dimensions
• Lack of defined roles and responsibilities
• Resistance to change across the organisation
• Lack of awareness on the benefits delivered through standards and frameworks

Why Outsource Tech Governance

It may seem easier to have an expert or a team working for you full-time. However, organisations benefit more from outsourcing IT governance.
Below are some of the advantages businesses can expect:

Staffing Flexibility

In the current volatile global economy, companies should be able to expand or downsize quickly. However, this may go against many labour laws and companies may face the risk of being sued.
Outsourcing allows organizations to adapt quickly to their current needs. Whether they need one or a team of tech governance professionals, they can easily do this without the above risks.

Added Efficiency

Organisations will benefit from skipping several steps towards building a Tech governance team. This will help save weeks or even months they would otherwise invest in recruitment drives, onboarding, and training.
Moreover, with IT governance handled by an external team, your internal workforce can focus on core business processes. That way, they can finish their projects faster and increase workflow to achieve the organization’s goals.

Pool of Skilled Professionals

One of the significant advantages of outsourcing Tech governance is access to multi-skilled professionals. Finding an employee with a specific set of skills can be difficult; and more so with experience backing it.
However, by contracting a service provider, you get to select from a team of experts and choose the right people for the task(s) at hand. As they are well versed and up to date with the latest in their field, they can offer innovative approaches to help achieve your business’ goals.

More Cost Savings

Outsourcing tech governance functions will help organisations save in different ways. For instance, businesses do not need to pay for regulatory costs such as healthcare benefits. Further, by outsourcing overseas, you can receive the same high-quality expertise at lower cost.
Outsourcing also saves hiring, outboarding, and training costs. All three are the responsibility of the service provider, so you do not have to worry about them.

Thinking About Outsourcing Tech Governance?

Business Beam has recently introduced Tech Governance Outsourcing. Through this service, qualified and experienced subject matter experts will help you set direction, make informed decisions, and plan for the future.
Backing their skills are years of IT governance consulting experience which spans different industry verticals across the US, UAE, KSA, Oman, and Pakistan. In over a decade, we have established ourselves as leading consultants who remain conscious of requirements and aim to deliver beyond expectations.
For more details on the service, please contact us with your requirements and we will guide you accordingly.



The post IT Governance Outsourcing: The Best Strategy for a Great 2021 appeared first on Business Beam.

Websites became inaccessible; and with the data center site being off limits, it will be a while before the offline centers can restart. In fact, many OVHcloud customers aren’t expected to be back online until March 22, 2021.

While this two-week outage is bound to lead to major losses, some companies will not be appeased with refunds and compensation. Such is the case of the video game maker Rust, which lost all of its data in the fire.

So, what are the takeaways from this incident? Two definitely come to mind, and those are listed below.

Always Have a Disaster Recovery Plan
The first thing OVHcloud’s founder Octave Klaba tweeted was, “We recommend to activate your Disaster Recovery Plan.”

The most seriously affected users were those who ran dedicated bare metal servers at the data center. These users do not get access to OVHcloud’s virtual servers. As a result, their data was lost completely.

While data centers are reliable, it is important to keep in mind that 100% reliability is an ideal scenario. As accidents happen, it is imperative that enterprises have some backup and disaster plans ready. That way, they can anticipate risks and take appropriate action accordingly.

Your organization needs to ensure that it can withstand a catastrophe such as a fire. Therefore, you need to go beyond simple automated backups.

Your business continuity and disaster recovery plan should entail comprehensive policies and complete protocols or else it will not be effective. This may require meaningful resources, time and capital. However, the payoff is knowing that your data is safe and you can go back online in no time.

Customers Should Thoroughly Understand their Responsibilities
Many OVH customers who had virtual private servers or dedicated servers without backup. seemed to be under the assumption that their data was saved elsewhere. However, it seems they misunderstood.

Managing virtual private servers as well as dedicated servers is the customer’s own duty, not OVH. Therefore, the companies that bore losses did not know what they were up against.

Even if they did, they probably only considered drive crashes or memory failures and made backups on other servers but in the same building.

Therefore, to avoid any risks, customers should seriously consider what their responsibilities are and plan accordingly.

The current confusion resulting from the OVH fire may also be an indicator that customers did not fully understand the service. It is important that you understand all the details of a service and get its details and assurances in service level agreements (SLAs).

Make sure to thoroughly inspect SLAs for items that address service guarantee and the compensation offered. The latter indicates the service provider’s level of commitment to protecting everything your enterprise holds dear.

Let Us Help Secure Your Business Against Emergencies, Crises and Disasters
Organizations cannot afford extended interruptions in their operations and services. Especially considering the growing number of continuity risks resulting from the pandemic. Therefore, it is imperative that they plan and ensure the availability of critical functions despite dire situations.

Using ISO 22301, we can implement a custom Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) which integrates with your ISO management system, plans for business continuity events, and raises awareness of business continuity requirements.

If you wish to learn more about this and other ways Business Beam can safeguard your information assets, contact us. Our team of senior consultants will gladly guide you to ensure your resilience for years to come.

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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations’ main business continuity risk was the “non-availability of working facilities or offices”. 

In fact, upon being asked “Due to any reason (e.g. fire, flood, earthquake, civil unrest, etc.), if you and your teams are unable to come to your office, how in your opinion the IT would continue the support for company’s operations?”, managers of IT departments replied with “IT teams would work from home”. 

Now, however, working from home has become the norm, and may continue to be so in the upcoming months. According to a survey conducted in March 2020 by Gartner, 74% of CFO believe some of their employees who were forced to work from home may decide to continue working remotely even when the pandemic comes to an end.

Some respondents believe companies themselves will request employees to continue at home to manage costs until they recover financially from the aftermath of the pandemic. On-premises technology spends and real estate expenses are the top two costs organizations have deferred or plan to do so in the near future. 

The Risks Companies Face While Employees Work from Home

With a significant number of employees worldwide forced to work from home, organizations are beginning to face the threats associated with remote work without proper oversight or preparation. Here’s a quick overview of some of these risks. 

1. Business Continuity Risks 

By definition, continuity risks are high impact and low probability risks.

In this diagram, the impact of risks is shown on the X-axis (low to high) whereas the probability of risks is on Y-axis (low to high). Upon dividing the diagram into four quadrants, continuity related risks belong to 4th quadrant (Q4), where the impact is high and probability is low. 

Traditionally while developing Continuity Plans, consultants including our own ensure that the organization has developed the required level of resilience by offering all the processes, tools, accesses, facilities, training to staff members, etc. for such a situation.

As work from home has become the norm for several IT teams the ‘non-availability of office facilities’ will not remain as Continuity Risk. Instead, it will be considered an operational risk. Keeping the above diagram in mind, ‘work from home’ will have a higher probability and therefore move to Q1. 

Meanwhile, risks mentioned in Q1 and Q2 will come under the operational (business as usual) risks category.

In this case, the IT Continuity Risk Assessment will have a very different set of risks in the risk register post-COVID-19 lockdowns. Assuming that few teams always work from home, possible risks include:

• Nonavailability of internet facilities
• Interruption in a cellular network
• Overcrowding of collaboration tools like Zoom, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams
• Non-availability of the critical team member(s) 

Access, Authorization, and Authentication Threats

Organizations that have not established or maintained a robust remote structure are struggling the most during the pandemic. Remote connectivity has left them vulnerable to access, authorization, and authentication risks. 

Companies may not have comprehensive policies for access control – i.e. methods to guarantee users are who they say they are before providing them appropriate access to data. Similarly, they may not be able to carry out authentication (verify someone is who they claim to be) or authorization (determine if a user should be allowed access to data or make a transaction). 

Without these measures being part of a company’s remote work policy, sensitive data will be exposed. This is especially true if employees access this data through a public-facing web server that operates with a software vulnerability. 

Access mining is another issue companies may face. The collection and selling of access descriptors such as IP addresses and usernames and passwords is currently a thriving business that benefits cybercriminals. With their credentials leaked, organizations may end up facing catastrophic results. 

2. Unsanctioned Remote Access to IT Infrastructure 

Employees working remotes are working on a network that is not directly controlled by their organizations. Without a Virtual Private Network (VPN), businesses cannot maintain network security and end up facing an increased risk of data breaches and leaks of sensitive information. 

As most businesses did not get the time to prepare for the mass move from offices to home spaces, companies are under pressure to monitor network security risks and block access to internal infrastructure upon detecting any suspicious access attempts. This, in turn, can affect employee productivity as most attempts would be their own. 

3. Use of Bring Your Own Devices

With employees using their own mobile devices to share data or access information, they put companies at the risk of data theft. This is especially true when they neglect to change mobile passwords or do not have a BYOD policy at their workplace. 

Companies face risk exposure from employees’ devices on the corporate network if they have malware or other Trojan software. With no mobile device management policy in place, companies have no authority to wipe these devices if they are lost, stolen, or used in violation of company policies. 

Top Measures for Improving Security and Reducing Risks 

While the aforementioned barely scratch the surface, their impacts can cripple a business indefinitely. Therefore, enterprises need to take several steps including those listed below. 

1. Invest in VPNs

The Novel Coronavirus has made VPNs transform from being a luxury into a necessity for all working social classes. Using a virtual private network enables the creation of an encrypted virtual tunnel for traffic between employees’ home and work networks. As a result, the risk of attackers intercepting this data is reduced. Moreover, they make online behavior safer. 

While VPN is ideal for transporting data securely, keep in mind that it provides limited anonymity. Furthermore, employees are not fully protected against targeted advertising. Therefore, you need to consult with an expert before implementing VPNs in a secure way. 

2. Focus on Reducing Human Error

While employees are vital for your success, they may also be the cause of your downfall. The following are common human errors that can compromise the security and continuity of your business. 

• Misdelivery – The fifth most common cause of cybersecurity breaches, misdelivery entails sending confidential information to the wrong people. A classic example of this is when an NHS practice employee ended up sending an email notification to HIV patients but accidentally entered email addresses in the ‘to’ field rather than the ‘bcc’ field. 
• Password Issues – Most users tend to make password mistakes such as reusing the same password of their main email account, writing down passwords, or sharing them around. The majority also use simple passwords. In fact, 123456 is the most popular password worldwide. 
• Delay in Patch Installation – Users can delay installing security updates on their computers. As a result, this provides cybercriminals the opportunity to attack. 

Organizations need to take important measures such as enforcing privilege control, password control, and two-factor authentication across the business. They also need to create a security-focused culture where security is an integral part of every decision and action. Training will further help with this aspect as long as it is engaging and relevant. 

3. Develop Strict Access Control Protocols 

Access controls are integral as they add a layer of security around the network. Therefore, you need to implement these and ensure they do not log or else holes will appear in your perimeter. 

The use of role-based access control (RBAC) has been known to help enterprises. Monitoring and strategically restricting access controls can also help reduce the risk of human error to your cybersecurity. 

Let Us Help You Get the Most from Working from Home 

There is so much more that organizations need to do to address any security gaps which can compromise their business. Business Beam’s team of consultants can help you in this regard by:

• Delivering real value instead of documenting for the sake of document
• Offering solid experience developed after conducting over 100 risk assessment exercises, mostly as part of implementing any other framework
• Providing the expertise of senior-level, certified and experienced consultants to help you achieve your security goals
• Utilizing ISO 31000 as the base framework for IT risk assessment; in addition to having certified consultants, Business Beam is authorized by PECB to conduct official ISO 31000 training courses with the certification examination
• Offering COBIT 2019 authorized assessments and training courses with certification examinations

So do not hesitate to contact us with your security needs to be fully prepared for the upcoming change in work cultures. 

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Standing in the race of uninterrupted and nonstop changing technology, enterprises need to make massive changes to adapt and succeed. This transformation is driven by technologies fusing the physical, digital, and biological worlds. While the resulting shifts and disruptions introduce great promise, they also present great dangers. One of these dangers is IT risks.

The Current IT Risk Landscape

Today, data is more precious than software and even hardware in some cases. Bulks of data are produced daily – millions of transactions are incurred and billions in revenue flow out of the online marketplace alone.

Also generated are approximately 300,000 new malware threats. Moreover, there is a hacker attack every 39 second. In addition to putting personal and private information at stakes, these risks trigger and shake confidence in IT security and integrity, reduce credibility, and make portfolios vulnerable and prone to downfall.

The continuity and growth of business requires serious attention and focus on the relation of IT and business, and alignment to the goals, objective, vision and mission of the organisation. Therefore, like risk management is essential for business, it is as important for IT risks. This is because one thing is constant: change. In order to comply with these innovations, managing IT risks is vital.

What is IT Risk Management?

IT risk management corresponds to the implementation of risk management techniques and principles in order to manage information system of organisation. It focuses on managing the ownership, involvement, people, resources, hardware, software, vendors, operations, working, influence, process, innovation, and use of IT as a part of enterprise. As a result, it would lead the enterprise to deliver value to stakeholders.

IT Risks to Consider

IT risks can belong to information, IT & Cybersecurity, IT Service Management, Business & ICT Continuity, and IT Portfolio / Program / Project Management areas. It is important to understand these to ensure timely mitigation. The following list highlights specific IT risks:

• Architecture Risks
• Capacity
• Change Control
• Compliance Violation
• Contract Risk
• Data Loss
• Decision Quality
• Knowledge Management
• Facility Risk
• Infrastructure Risk
• Innovation Risks
• Vendors Risk
• Physical Security Risks
• Procurement Risks
• Project Risks
• Product Risks
• Security Threats
• Points of Failure
• Regulatory Risks
• Resource Risks
• People Risks

IT Risk Management Methodologies

Organisations resort to various risk management standards, frameworks, and methodologies to manage their risks. There are no specific requirements or recommendations to follow a particular risk management methodology.

Regardless of the method used, the outcome of the risk management process must be to bring organisational risks up to an acceptable level. Some of the popular risk methodologies include NIST SP800, Octave, CRAMM, ISO 27005, and ISO 31000.

The Ultimate IT Risk Management Process

A risk management process refers to the steps and tasks that should be covered in order to handle risks successfully and, in turn, minimise its effects. The following risk management process will surely allow you to find risks that are critical for the survival of business in the age of information and innovation, and ultimately enable you to utilise technology that aligns your business to the flow.

Step 1: Identify the Risk

The first and foremost step is to identify risks that possess the potential to affect the enterprise’s IT environment and prioritise them based on their intensity. The latter takes into consideration the objectives of the business, thus enabling the organisation to plan and organise an appropriate methodology for mitigating risk.

This step also includes informing stakeholders about the diagnosed risks via a Risk Management System. The discovery of risk would trigger the risk management team to look for solutions and devise a plan to minimise the likelihood of risk.

Step 2: Analyse the Risk

Once the identification of risk is done, it needs to be analysed. The scope of risk must be determined, and its effects must be considered to create an effective plan. It is essential to understand the different factors in the organisation and risk. There are risks so severe that they can bring a business down to its knees.

This analysis can be done using technology and business intelligence solutions which facilitate the depth, pictorial, and graphical analysis over bulk of data. With these, a wide range of conclusions can be drawn with ease and in a timely manner.

Step 3: Examine the Solutions

Risks needs to be prioritised based on their severity and the effects they introduce to the enterprise. It is a good practice to create a scale which shows risks according to their severity. The least severe risks are those that have a small effect on the performance of your business.

A Risk Management solution has different categories. A risk that may cause little inconvenience is categorised with a low tag. Meanwhile risks that can bring heavy loss are tagged higher based on the intensity of their consequences. This step falls under the domain of risk quantification. Just a single higher priority risk is enough to cease the organisation if not taken seriously.

Step 4: Implement Solutions

All the identified risks need to be eradicated or removed in order to retain the enterprise’s position in the market. This is done by involving experts on the domain a risk belongs to.

For solutions, all relevant stakeholders need to be notified about the risk and the methodology used to minimise its effect. Upper management needs to keep a close eye on the activities taking place to eliminate risks.

Step 5: Monitor Results

Risk management is an ongoing, iterative process which needs to be revised regularly. The surveillance of activities against risks is the responsibility of the management and the system. All outgoing and incoming of data must be monitored carefully to maintain the balance, availability and integrity of information.

An organisation needs a framework or set of standards in order to keep the process of risk monitoring ongoing and, ultimately, de-risk the business. By listing potential risk factors, businesses can avail golden opportunities and take appropriate substantial steps.

The Process of Risk Treatment

Risk mitigation is an approach selected by senior management to identify what best mitigates a risk. Risk mitigation can be ensured by any of the following options.

• Risk Assumption – To accept the potential of identified risk and keep IT operating systems running, or to apply solutions to minimise the risk level
• Risk Avoidance – To avoid risk by removing the causes of potential risks
• Risk Limitation – To limit the risk by applying controls which lower the adverse impact of a threat’s exercising the vulnerability
• Risk Transfer – To transfer the risk by taking other measures to cover the loss, such as buying insurance

The Prominent Role of IT Risk Managers

A corporate IT risk manager is a multi-disciplinary professional with an understanding of information systems and internal business processes and financial instruments. This professional might have a background in computer science, business management, finance, insurance or actuarial science.

An IT risk manager may suggest solutions to a corporation to protect its assets. For instance, they may recommend investing in methods and tools which secure the system as well as the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of data. Hence, this individual now has a much bigger role to play than ever before.

The Bottom Line

To ensure the robustness of an enterprise despite the cutthroat competition, risk management is an essential approach that must be applied throughout the entire system and cover all the internal and external aspects of the organisation.

This process empowers the enterprise to deal with its future endeavors in a confident manner. Moreover, it strengthens decisions, presents them in various verticals, and determines flaws and drawbacks that can ruin the business. Therefore, it allows the enterprise to remove it.

With our decades of experience, we can help you assess your enterprise’s IT risks and propose ways to manage them. Please do not hesitate to get in touch so you can prepare better for the latest threats which may come your way.

The post Managing IT Risks – The Best Process for Today’s Enterprises appeared first on Business Beam.

Recently, however, industry leaders began moving away from SLA-driven contracts as they believe they may not meet rapidly changing needs. According to them, SLAs do not go beyond managing IT services to managing customers’ experience of IT.

Why Service Level Agreements are No Longer Sufficient

Let us take a step back to SLAs to understand why enterprises began moving away from them. First off – What is an SLA? By definition, an SLA is:

“A documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service.”

Usually, SLAs contain three sections for defining: a) the scope of agreement; b) the characteristics of the services; and c) the terms and conditions of the service provision and consumption.

Unfortunately, most comprehensive SLAs include gaps between consumers’ expectations and the final agreement because:

• Some of the needs and expectations are communicated by consumers
• Some of the requirements are discussed between the customer and the service provider
• Some of the discussed quality characteristics are documented in the agreement.

There are multiple reasons for these gaps, starting from miscommunication to intentional limiting. During the mass provision of services, especially for individual consumers such as home internet or private banking, negotiations are limited to the options in the service catalogue. Service consumers have little to no influence on SLAs beyond selecting from those options.

As a result, the agreed service level always differs from the expectations and needs the service aims to meet and fulfil. In fact, they tend to often be narrower in scope and lower in level.

Service level providers focus on meeting service levels stipulated in contracts. With time, however, their focus shifts to providing a minimum level of service at a minimum cost. As a result, IT organisations become commodities rather than strategic partners. This, in turn, prevents them from effectively contributing to business agility and pace.

The Watermelon Effect Due to SLAs

As tempting as the above image may seem, there is nothing desirable about the watermelon effect in service management.

The watermelon effect is described as:

“a situation where all targets are hit, and service level reports are ‘green’, while users and customers demonstrate ‘red’ levels of satisfaction.”

The watermelon effect is a risk which arises from an overly SLA-focused service desk. Red levels of satisfaction occur due to several reasons, including:

• SLAs being different from consumer expectations
• Targets met via underhanded means (e.g. closing incident records before target resolution time, then opening new records with the same information and continuing the work in a new timeframe)
• Not taking into account personal factors like culture, geography, and age when investigating users’ experience
• Not including user experience in SLAs which in turn prevent monitoring, measuring, or analysing it

To overcome this issue, SLAs should be amended to include user satisfaction targets. However, satisfaction rates can be adjusted artificially. Moreover, measuring satisfaction does not provide a better understanding of users’ experiences, or replace the measurement of service quality.

As a result, more enterprises began pivoting towards Experience Level Agreements (XLAs).

What are Experience Level Agreements (XLAs)?

By definition, Experience Level Agreements, or XLAs, are –

“A type of SLA designed to establish a common understanding of the quality levels that a customer will experience using the service in terms that are clear to the customer and to which he or she can relate.”

XLAs are a natural extension of SLAs in the Service Management domain. They aim at providing service consumers with a clear understanding of the experience they can expect when using the service. They also address the measurable characteristics of the user experience.

Moreover, XLAs can play a role in negotiating and managing service levels for end-user-facing services. This, however, would require an understanding of the dependencies between technical service level characteristics and user experience though. It may include user satisfaction with the overall service or specific aspects of the service as an experience characteristic.

XLAs are applicable to end-user services. For services addressing individual consumers, agreements can be described via the experience characteristics. Examples of this include internet and mobile network services. On the other hand, for services addressing corporate consumers, the agreement may include experience characteristics and technical characteristics for users and the IT team respectively. Examples include network services, printing services, and service applications.

Due to these reasons and more, XLAs are becoming increasingly popular among service providers. However, the ‘experience’ section in most cases is limited measuring user satisfaction with the service. It may also be further limited to the user satisfaction with service support. Though important, this data is insufficient for defining a new type of service agreement.

Another important consideration to keep in mind is that while XLAs are a form of SLA, the latter cannot transform into the former by simply adding satisfaction targets.

Delivering Value through Utility, Warranty and Customer Experience

ITIL 4 has significantly expanded on how to create service level agreement. Traditionally, ‘level’ in an SLA highlights the agreed service level targets for utility and warranty. However, ITIL 4 suggests service quality and service level should also include customer experience to become holistic and focused on value.

Let us look at the definitions of utility, warranty, and customer experience according to ITSM framework for a better understanding of all three.

Utility

Utility is the functionality offered by a product or service to meet a need. It basically defines what the service does, and can be used to determine whether a service is ‘fit for purpose’. To have utility, a service must either support the performance of the consumer or remove constraints from them. Many services do both.

Warranty

Warranty is the assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements. It can be described as ‘how the service performs’. It can be used to determine whether a service is ‘fit for use’.

Warranty often relates to service levels aligned to the needs of service consumers. This may be based on a formal agreement, or it may be a marketing message or brand image.

Warranty typically addresses such areas as the availability of the service, its capacity, levels of security, and continuity. A service may be said to provide acceptable assurance, or ‘warranty’, if all defined and agreed conditions are met.

Customer Experience

An important element of value is the experience that service consumers have when they interact with the service and the service provider. This is frequently called customer experience (CX).

Customer Experience (CX) is formally defined as:

“the entirety of the interactions a customer has with an organization and its products. This experience can determine how the customer feels about the organization and its products and services.”

The experience-based approach to service definition and measurement is applicable to services where service actions are an important part of the service (and may be the way to describe the service utility). In other words, it applies to services where users work with service interfaces.

Note that there are many services with no or few user interactions, including infrastructure as a service’ services.

From the perspective of experience management, a service action is the most important form of interaction. Examples of experience metrics include the number and frequency of:

• User errors
• Returns to the previous stage (back-button usage)
• Help (F1) calls
• Dropped (unfinished) service actions
• Users who switched to a different support channel during the support process
• Users who cancel a subscription after a trial period
• Users who confirm agreement with the terms and conditions without reading them.

How to Write Service Level Agreement in a More Effective Way

When defining a format for SLAs, service providers may benefit from the following actions:

• If services are for end-users, include user experience characteristics in the agreement.
• Agree on and measure the following user experience characteristics:
  • Performance of user’s service actions
  • Performance of user interfaces
  • User satisfaction with overall services and specific service components or actions
• Correlate the performance of users’ service actions and user interfaces with measurable technical characteristics.
• Ensure data reliability (because user satisfaction metrics are easy to manipulate).

The Bottom Line

Modern ITSM recommends that service providers understand and manage service consumers’ experiences. This can be achieved by including experience characteristics in SLAs in one of three forms:

• Performance of user’s service actions
• Performance of user interfaces
• User satisfaction.

Finally, ITIL 4 advises practitioners to include experience in SLAs, along with the agreed service utility and warranty targets.

Find out how Business Beam can help you develop realistic and experience-based Service Level Agreements by implementing ITSM using ITIL or ISO 20000.

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1.  Business or IT integrations (73%)
2. Better risk management (60%)
3. Uncovering security gaps (49%)
4. Better visibility for the board of directors (45%)

With the introduction of COBIT® 2019, practitioners have started questioning whether to pursue this certification despite being certified in COBIT® 5. Thus the question: what are the major differences between COBIT 5 and COBIT 2019 frameworks?

To clearly understand the difference between both COBIT frameworks and their certifications, let’s go over what they both offer first.

What is COBIT 5?

Released in 2012, COBIT 5 addresses the biggest challenges enterprises face over the years, which are missed IT project deadlines, disconnect between IT and business strategies, and cyber threat landscape.

COBIT 5.0 expanded on COBIT 4.1, detailing the then-latest techniques for enterprise governance and management. It can be combined with other ISACA resources to accommodate clients’ needs, ensure performance satisfaction, and differentiate between governance and management.

Applying COBIT 5.0 principles effectively reduces the risks of IT implementations. The managerial procedures in the framework are aligned carefully with process activities, inputs and outputs processes, key process objectives, performance measures, elementary maturity model, and performance measures.

COBIT 5 further provides globally acceptable practices, principals, and tools that enable value from IT. The extended guidance provides IT, risk, assurance, business, and security on objectives and on strategy.

What is COBIT 2019?

COBIT 2019 is an updated version of COBIT 5. It is built on the solid foundation of its predecessor while integrating the latest developments affecting enterprise information and technology.

In addition to the updates we will detail in a bit, the latest framework offers certificate candidates implementation resources, guidance and insights, as well as training opportunities. It further positions businesses for future success through:

1. Coverage of the critical elements to an enterprise, i.e. data, projects and compliance
2. An open-source model which allows the global governance community to propose enhancements for updating the framework
3. Flexible framework implementation for either specific problem solving or enterprise-wide adoption

Why COBIT 5 Evolved into COBIT 2019

The release of COBIT 2019 was necessary as COBIT 5 was introduced more than seven years ago in 2012. Since then, the trends, technologies, and security needs for organisations have dramatically changed. Organisations which fail to adapt with time become obsolete easily. This is especially true when it comes to the evolution of IT as it plays a vital role in almost all the processes across a business.

To indicate the new change, COBIT 2019 was released with a new logo. In addition to a modern font to reflect the new framework, the new logo features a different ‘O’. The red arrow shown below denotes the continuous changes in the world of technology.

ISACA actually explained this change in their logo –

“To remain relevant, it is imperative that COBIT continues to evolve requiring more frequent and fluid updates. The red arrow symbolizes this notion of continuous evolution.”

Upgrading COBIT was also necessary to ensure better alignment with global standards, frameworks, and best practices such as ITIL®, CMMI®, and TOGAF®. In this context, alignment means not contradicting any guidance or copying the contents of related standards. That way, COBIT can maintain its positioning as an umbrella framework.

COBIT 5 vs COBIT 2019: Main Differences

According to ISACA, COBIT 2019 introduces new concepts, adds updates to enhance the relevancy of COBIT, rolls out an ‘open-source’ model for global governance, and offers new guidance and tools for a best-fit governance system.

Let’s look at these changes in more detail.

Modified COBIT Principles

COBIT 2019 has classified principles into two areas: Governance Systems Principles and Governance Framework Principles. COBIT 5 defined five principles that are now part of the Governance System Principles.

The updated COBIT 2019 principles are as follows:

COBIT 2019’s Design Factors

The latest iteration of COBIT includes an additional guide: COBIT 2019 Design Guide: Designing an Information and Technology Governance Solution. It goes over the design factors which influence the design of an enterprise’s governance system while ensuring its success in the use of IT.

COBIT 2019 introduces 11 design factors which are broadly categorised as:

• Contextual (i.e. outside the control of the enterprise)
• Strategic (reflect the decisions the enterprise makes)
• Tactical (based on implementation choices regarding resourcing models, IT methods, and technology adoption choices).

With these design factors, organisations can tailor their governance systems to realise the most value. These are applied according to the stages and steps in the design process provided in the Design Guide. You can, however, download the COBIT 2019 Design Guide Tool Kit, which is an Excel tool for facilitating the governance system design workflow.

COBIT 2019 Performance Management Model

The COBIT performance management (CPM) model was created to evaluate how the governance and management system and all the components of an organisation work; and how they can be improved to achieve target levels of capability and maturity. Its concepts and methods align and extend CMMI v2.0 capability and maturity levels.

So, what does the CPM model have to offer practitioners? In addition to highlighting the capability and maturity of an existing process and focus area, the model can be used to improve relevant governance and management components over intervals of time.

COBIT CPM also delivers increased value to businesses, enables the measurement of current versus projected business goals, enhances benchmarking and reporting, and ensures adherence to organisational compliance.

Focus Areas Concept

“Focus areas” are part of the new COBIT® iteration. These describe governance topics and issues which can be addressed by management or governance objectives. Some examples of these areas include small and medium enterprises, cybersecurity, and cloud computing.

An interesting fact on focus areas is that there is a virtually unlimited number of these concepts. Focus areas will be added and changed based on trends, research, and feedback. This is why COBIT has become an open-ended model.

COBIT Core Model

The COBIT Core Model is an upgrade to COBIT 5’s Process Reference Model (PRM). It is the heart of the framework as it details the governance and management objectives used for establishing an organisation’s governance program.

This iteration adds three new objectives to the 37 listed in COBIT 5:

• AP014 Managed Data – As per ISACA, this process aims at achieving and sustaining the effective management of enterprise data assets across the data lifecycle. As a result, it ensures the effective utilisation of critical data assets in order to achieve business goals.
• BAI11 Managed Projects – This management objective aims to manage all projects initiated within the organisation in alignment with enterprise strategy, and according to standard project management approach. That way, defined project outcomes can be realised; the risk of unexpected delays, costs, and value erosion can be reduced; and the quality and value of project deliverables can be ensured.
• MEA04 Managed Assurance – According to its description, this objective entails planning, scoping, and executive assurance initiatives to comply with regulations, laws, and strategic objectives. This enables organisations to design and develop sustainable assurance initiatives for assurance activities.

Items Removed, Changed, and Updated

In addition to the aforementioned major changes, the following table indicates parts of COBIT® 5 which have been eliminated, changed, or updated in the latest framework.

New Publications

COBIT 2019 was also rolled out with a new set of publications, which are:

1. COBIT 2019 Framework: Introduction and Methodology
2. COBIT 2019 Framework: Governance and Management Objectives
3. COBIT 2019 Design Guide: Designing an Information and Technology Governance Solution
4. COBIT 2019 Implementation Guide: Implementing and Optimizing an Information and Technology Governance Solution

Why COBIT Users Gain More from COBIT 2019

From what you have read so far, you probably noticed that even ISACA is pushing practitioners towards COBIT 2019. That too, for many good reasons.

First off, the framework has received a major update to keep up with the latest needs of businesses and IT, especially IT governance. It is now more capable than ever to increase business value, reduce business risk, and ensure compliance with regulations.

Other prominent advantages of choosing COBIT 2019 over COBIT 5.0 are:

• Enhanced alignment with global standards, frameworks, and best practices
• Regular updates and advancements due to continual changes to focus area concepts
• Continual improvement, especially through regular feedback from stakeholders
• Flexible approach to IT governance as organisations can tailor COBIT according to their needs
• Better alignment of IT with organisation goals to achieve objectives

Upgrade to COBIT 2019 Foundation Certification

While your COBIT 5 Certificate will not expire, having the latest ISACA certification will vouch for your ability to keep with the latest standards, frameworks, and compliance requirements to deliver benefits to your business.

So, make the transition to COBIT 2019. Register for a two-day COBIT 2019 Foundation training session to prepare for the certification exam.

COBIT® and ISACA® are the registered trademarks of ISACA. All logos and trademarks are the properties of their respective owner organizations.

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