IT Governance Blog on IT governance, risk management, compliance and information security.

Are you going away this summer?

The holiday season is under way and if you are taking a break you may want to use it as an opportunity to keep on top of your game with the help of a book or distance learning package.

Our in-house publishing team, ITGP, have produced many new titles over the last few months, all of which are written by leading industry experts. All of our titles are now available in Softcover and eBook formats.
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An essential tool for anyone whose job it is to deliver high quality results on time and to budget!

Agile approaches are business practices with a proven track record for helping organisations to achieve greater efficiency, higher quality outputs and increased customer satisfaction. The basic concept behind Agile is that organisations must adapt to change. Agile principles, therefore, encourage staff to produce high quality business outputs at regular intervals, basing ongoing financial and resource commitments on the delivered outcomes. In this way, they enable organisations to avoid the trappings of extensive up-front planning and up-front budget commitments.

Agile Principles Unleashed is available for pre-purchase shows how you can use Agile principles to improve productivity, quality and customer satisfaction, whatever your organisation. Written in non-technical language that will appeal to business professionals, the book is an essential tool for anyone whose job it is to deliver high quality results on time and to budget.
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Business Continuity Management has an important role to play in the long-term success of an organisation. It allows an organisation to understand, and plan, how it would react in a given scenario, and increase its chances of surviving a distruption that could, in the absence of a business continuity management system, cripple its operation and even stop it from trading all together!

Until the end of July, we are giving away an additional two resources with the BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit!

BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit Special Offer Free – Coping with Unplanned Absences, which looks at what you can do to ensure your employees fulfil their obligations and turn up as required. It gets to grips with the question of how your organisation should handle unplanned absences before and when they arise; And Free – IT Outsourcing Contracts: A Legal and Practical Guide, which identifies some of the benefits and the pitfalls that an organisation may encounter when outsourcing its IT.

This toolkit contains electronic copies of the following specialist guides:

• BS25999 A Pocket Guide, which provides an easy to read and straightforward introduction to the subjects of business continuity and BS 25999;
• Business Continuity and BS25999: A Combined Glossary, which sets out a common vocabulary for business continuity; &
• Business Continuity Management: a Manager’s Guide to BS25999, which is a concise and practical guide to implementing this new benchmark for business continuity management.

As well as document templates, tools and references that enable you to quickly and efficiently produce your own tailored versions of all these essential documents:

• the scope and objectives of the BCMS and procedures;
• the BCM policy;
• the provision of resources;
• the competency of BCM personnel and associated training records;
• the business impact analysis;
• the risk assessment;
• the business continuity strategy;
• the incident response structure;
• business continuity plans and incident management plans;
• BCM exercising;
• the maintenance and review of BCM arrangements;
• internal audit;
• management review of the BCMS;
• preventive and corrective actions; and
• continual improvement.

This toolkit comes with an inbuilt 12-month support and upgrade contract that ensures that buyers benefit from all improvements to the toolkit for 12 months, and provides online documentation email drafting support as and when you need it.

The BS25999 BCMS Toolkit is available for immediate download and if you order before the end of July 2010 we’ll send you 2 additional guides absolutely FREE!

Download it today >>

PRINCE2™, as a method and a certification, is adopted in most of Western Europe and Australia and are becoming highly dominant in the US.

PRINCE2 is a structured approach to project management. It provides a method for managing projects within a clearly defined framework. PRINCE2 describes procedures to coordinate people and activities in a project, how to design and supervise the project, and what to do if the project has to be adjusted if it doesn’t develop as planned.

The method has been revised and launched as “PRINCE2:2009 Refresh” on June 16th, 2009. You can now order all of the core PRINCE2:2009 books in one go by purchasing The Official PRINCE2:2009 Book Bundle.
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IT Governance Publishing (ITGP), the specialist publishing arm of information security experts IT Governance, is bringing the principles of Sun Tzu’s classic text, The Art of War, to the fight against cybercrime.

ITGP’s latest book, Assessing Information Security: Strategies, Tactics, Logic and Framework, argues that the art of war, and the art of information security, are more closely aligned than one might expect. Technical skills and procedural knowledge are not enough; these qualities need to be deployed strategically to control the cybercrime battlefield.

The book, written by Dr Andrew Vladimirov, Konstantin Gavrilenko and Andriej Michajlowski, demonstrates that businesses need clear objectives and strategies, just like a military campaign, to implement information security effectively. The book explains, for example, that:
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We have reduced our prices across 75% of the ITGP range and remain highly competitive on pricing throughout our other ranges including titles from the OGC, such as ITIL, PRINCE2 and MSP.

Our USA website, www.itgovernanceUSA.com, is the one-stop-shop service delivering highly relevant knowledge, tools and advice to help IT leaders adopt best practice.

The ITGP range consists of pocket guides, books and toolkits that have been written by subject matter experts and cover a broad range of topics, at market beating prices, including:
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It’s that time of year again when most public sector organisations and many private sector organisations begin to look at budgets for the next financial year. With the country struggling to come out of recession and with big public sector cut backs on the horizon, it is vital that every pound spent can be justified, accounted for and not wasted. Whist tight financial controls are inevitable, given the state of the economy, it is essential that funds are available for projects that will help organisations to survive and prosper though the upturn.

Over the next few weeks, as budgets for 2010/2011 are agreed and finalised, it is likely that your budgetary requirements from the previous 12 months will be taken in to consideration. If you have remaining funds from the 2009/2010 financial year and plan to roll over any residual funds into the next financial year, think again. It is highly unlikely that you’ll be rewarded for good financial control, but rather penalised for holding excess cash and, as a result, will see a reduction in next year’s budget.
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Businesses are increasingly choosing to outsource their IT function. The attraction of outsourcing IT is that it enables a company to obtain an efficient and responsive IT system, while at the same time allowing the company to focus on its core strengths.

The current economic climate is also putting companies under increasing pressure to find new ways of cutting costs. However, all too often IT outsourcing projects fail because companies have not applied appropriate governance processes to the project.

This book and pocket guide duo complement each other very well and will guide you through the outsourcing process. This duo will help you avoid the many pitfalls organisations face when outsourcing their IT.
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Order all of the core PRINCE2®:2009 books in one go with this bundle!

• Contains all of the core official PRINCE2:2009 books, enabling you to buy a complete collection of all the core PRINCE2:2009 books in one go whilst saving money.
• All of the advice and guidance within these manuals is fully aligned with the latest version of PRINCE2 giving you the most up-to-date information on the PRINCE2 methodology.
• Only contains official titles authored and endorsed by the OGC, the originators of the PRINCE2 methodology. Meaning you can be assured the books in the kit are authoritative and comprehensive.

Official PRINCE2:2009 Book Bundle This book bundle is the only place you can purchase all of the official PRINCE2:2009 titles in one go, saving time and money and keeping you up to date with the latest in the PRINCE2 methodology.

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If you’re implementing a business continuity management system (BCMS), in-line with BS25999 and want to save time and money, the BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit is must-buy resource!

The BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit contains document templates, tools and references that enable you to quickly and efficiently produce your own tailored versions of all the essential documents needed to become certified against BS25999.

This BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit Special Offer contains electronic copies of the following specialist guides:
	BS25999 A Pocket Guide; Business Continuity and BS25999: A Combined Glossary; Business Continuity Management: a Manager’s Guide to BS25999, a concise and practical guide to implementing this new benchmark for business continuity management. FREE – Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, Second Edition (Soft Cover), when your order before midnight on Friday!

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