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

Through December we’re offering you a Free subscription to our KnowledgeBank when you spend over £100 on our Online Store.

The KnowledgeBank contains electronic articles and downloadable papers designed to update and support people working in information security and IT governance; it is continuously updated with articles and documents written by Alan Calder and Steve Watkins (who are responsible for the best-selling IT Governance: a Manager’s Guide to Data Security), the IT Governance staff research team and from members of our Expert Panel.
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Business owners have been returning to their flood-damaged properties in Cumbria this week to assess the damage after unprecedented rainfall prompted some of the country’s worst ever flooding.

The full extent of the damage caused by these floods will not be known for some time; but it’s estimated that flood claims could exceed £100m!

Business owners and managers, upon viewing the devastating scenes broadcast on television during the floods, will be questioning how their organisation would cope in similar circumstances and, for the sake of their very survival, will ensure adequate business continuity plans are put in place.

It sometimes takes a disaster like this to remind people of the very real threat that organisations face and the possible implications which could result if not fully prepared.
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IT Governance produce and package many toolkits that fall within the broad range of IT governance subjects, including information security, compliance, risk management, ITIL, IT Service Management, Management Systems, Business Continuity, etc.

Below is a range of our most popular toolkits which are being used to accelerate compliance projects in organisations accross the globe.
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Every organisation, large and small, must have a business continuity plan. Large organisation plans will tend to be more complex than those of small ones. Smaller organisations can follow the advice available from BCI, London First and the UK’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office or get immediate continuity cover in place by using a Best Practice Business Continuity Kit.

Business continuity planning (BCP) involves the processes and procedures for the development, testing and maintenance of a (series of) plan(s) that will enable an organisation to continue operating during and after a disaster. Plans are typically designed to cope with incidents affecting all the organisation’s business-critical processes and activities, from failure of a single server, or server room, all the way through to complete loss of a major facility.
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As we remain in recession awaiting the long-anticipated ‘UpTurn’, now is the time for organisations to prepare their staff for the challenging times ahead. It is still as important as ever, for organisations to control expenditure and ensure that business operations remain efficient, yet effective.

‘Soft Skills’ are an essential part of every manager’s arsenal and should be developed with the same care and attention as other essential skills.

Our Pack 5 Soft Skills Titles aims to provide practical guidance on a range of soft-skills areas for those in IT. They may also be used to good effect by others, including those who deal with IT professionals, in order to facilitate more effective and co-operative working practices.
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If you like the idea of saving money, and also like the idea of receiving 3 best selling books worh £99.85 absolutely free, you should act fast and read on…

For a very limited time – Friday 13 November 2009 – we’re giving away three best selling books with every purchase of our comprehensive No 3 ISO 27001 ISMS Documentation Toolkit! This is on top of a £104 saving that the toolkit
already gives you.

What are the free books?
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Corporate governance increasingly provides the context within which twenty-first century organisations have to assess and deal with their investments in, and risks to, their corporate information assets and the Information and Communications Technology (ICT, or just IT) infrastructure within which those information assets are collected, manipulated, stored and deployed. But:

• what is corporate governance, and why is it important to the IT professional?
• Why is IT governance important to the company director, and
• what do directors of companies – both quoted and unquoted – need to know?

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In light of the impending Royal Mail postal strikes we have made permanent arrangements to bypass UK Royal Mail for all overseas customers and we have a low-cost alternative in place to bypass Royal Mail in the UK in accordance with which we will reduce the UK express shipping cost to just £7 from today.

How does this affect customers?

We will continue to offer free standard shipping through to the end of October. This offer is open to all our customer, no-matter where they are in the world, for most online orders through our online store at www.itgovernance.co.uk.
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IT Governance Publishing is a prolific publisher of Pocket Guides – short, handy guides to specific IT governance, regulatory compliance, information security and business continuity subjects (amongst others), written by subject matter experts.

IT Governance Pocket Guides are an inexpensive way for small and medium sized businesses to gain an understanding of specific compliance issues before they jump in at the deep end.

Many of the Pocket Guides in the ITGP range make for an ideal awareness tool for important business issues such as Information Security, Data Protection and Business Continuity.
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