A director's guide to IT governance

This book is an essential read for those sitting on the board of any organisation that wants to secure its information, its intellectual property and its competitive advantage.

Written for a non-technical, commercially-minded audience, this book offers a comprehensive introduction to the critical subject of IT governance.

Why is IT governance important?

Your business will stand or fall on the quality of its IT governance. Information technology can enable you to improve your operations and cut costs. And by changing the way you deal with your customers, IT may even have the potential to transform your entire business.

However, IT involves an element of risk. For the sake of your bottom line, these risks are something your company needs to be capable of managing.

IT governance and the board

IT governance generally enjoys less board understanding and commitment than corporate governance. However, the reality is that the IT function is vital to the running of your business and so IT governance too requires leadership from the top.

Information security breaches have the potential to alienate your customers and to damage your company's reputation. The consequences of cyber crime could cripple your business with heavy financial losses. Failure to comply with the information security requirements of corporate governance codes may even cause your company to be denied a presence in entire countries.

The road to information security goes through corporate governance. This means that information security has to be a specific board-agenda item, and a priority at CEO level.

IT governance and intellectual property

While you can easily judge how much a factory is worth, some of your company's most important assets may be the intangible ones. The real worth of your company is a matter of its intellectual capital - such as patents, designs and databases - as well as the sites and machinery in its possession.

This kind of information is held on computer systems. So your company needs to be as serious about protecting its digital information from industrial espionage and cybercrime as it is about protecting its warehouses from robbery and arson.

IT governance as a business enabler

Having an effective IT governance framework in place will help you to safeguard your company against an information security breach. At the same time, your IT governance framework can open doors for your business.

By ensuring that your IT systems are properly integrated with your business, and in harmony with your overall business goals, your company will be in a far better position to drive through changes and improvements. Establishing an IT governance framework is essential for the success both of IT projects and for the larger projects that need support from across the whole organisation.