The IT industry and IT departments in companies can only work efficiently if they are managed efficiently. This requires a set of frameworks and principles to be adopted by IT professionals as well as across organizations so that they can provide the most value possible to the organization. COBIT 5 is one such framework that enables value generation of IT to companies. In this article, let us explore the COBIT 5 principles in detail.
COBIT 5 is an essential framework implemented and utilized by organizations to guide IT management principles and IT governance. 34% of surveyed organizations agreed that their most significant driver of the company’s IT spend was IT security and risk management. Maintaining the security of IT processes, systems, applications, servers, and more is key to any business operation’s success. The COBIT 5 framework enables this security and framework. The article discusses the most important principles of COBIT 5 and the benefits of COBIT in today’s organizations.
Main COBIT 5 Principles
ISACA launched COBIT to generate and optimize the value of IT to the organization. The aim was to achieve this by creating a balance between the implementation of risk management and IT governance measures and using IT to meet business goals for the organization. There are five governing principles that COBIT 5 uses to create this balance within companies. These principles can be applied to any company that uses COBIT 5 as a framework, regardless of size or industry. The five main principles of COBIT 5 are:
- Enterprise-wide coverage
- Creating an integrated framework
- Meeting the needs of stakeholders
- Separating governance from management and including it in IT
- Creating a holistic approach to operational efficiency
Let us look at each of these COBIT 5 priciples in detail.
Enterprise-wide Coverage
When COBIT 5 is implemented, it affects more than just the IT department of an organization. COBIT 5 is a framework that can be applied to the entire enterprise, as it should be, to maximize its value to companies. The framework takes governance and risk management for the entire company as a whole instead of focusing it on just the IT.
Creating an Integrated Framework
COBIT 5 is an integrated framework that includes all the company’s teams, employees, and departments. It combines the organization’s needs and processes with the IT management and governance of the company. This integrated framework helps identify any potential threats to the organization and upgrades processes to operate more efficiently.
Meeting the Needs of Stakeholders
Stakeholder needs are always a priority for organizations because they can only succeed when all stakeholder needs are met. All operations and processes should be directed towards achieving business objectives, and the most crucial objective of them all should be meeting stakeholder needs. Stakeholders have certain requirements that the COBIT 5 framework addresses by managing all IT operations across the organization successfully. This helps in creating value with the deliveries, which is crucial to maintaining customer satisfaction.
Separating Governance from Management and Including it in IT
The responsibility of governance of all applications and systems should shift from the management teams to IT operations. This is because they are the ones best equipped to manage governance. If the IT governance and enterprise governance are combined with the help of COBIT 5, and the entire process becomes a lot more straightforward and simplified.
Creating a Holistic Approach to Operational Efficiency
COBIT 5 is for more than just the IT department in a company. It can be used to increase the overall efficiency of an organization. The framework provides an integrated and holistic approach to improving operational processes to maximize efficiency. Team members can focus on being more productive and generate more valuable output for the customers when they employ the COBIT 5 framework in their enterprise.
Benefits of COBIT 5 Principles For Today’s Enterprise
The principles of COBIT 5 can showcase the advantages the framework brings to any enterprise that implements it. The primary goal of any framework is to enhance the value of the organization’s final output to its end users, and COBIT 5 helps companies achieve that. The main benefits of including COBIT 5 principles today in organizations are:
- Maintains regulatory compliance for organizations
- Increases efficiency and productivity across the enterprise
- Safeguards company’s information systems
- Alignment of the goals of the IT department with the overall business goals of the organization
- Improving the quality of information and insights for the organization
- Risk management
Now let us explore each of these COBIT 5 benefits in detail.
Maintains Regulatory Compliance for Organizations
COBIT 5 helps organizations stay compliant with all the regulations so that they can avoid any unnecessary financial losses. This is a big part of IT management. A lot of regulations keep getting updated regularly, and companies need to be aware of them and work on keeping up with these updates. The COBIT 5 framework helps with this. Compliance offers a lot of benefits to organizations themselves by keeping their security systems updated, enhancing customer satisfaction, and more.
Increases Efficiency and Productivity Across the Enterprise
COBIT 5 creates an organizational structure, and its framework creates an environment that boosts productivity and efficiency of operations, especially when it comes to IT processes. The same IT processes that boost productivity can easily be scaled with COBIT 5 and can be applied to the entire company. Enterprise-wide enhancement of productivity and increase in efficiency will help companies stay competitive in the market.
Safeguards Companies-Information Systems
Information and security systems are considered to be one of the most valuable assets of an organization. The COBIT 5 framework secures information systems across the company, making cybersecurity a much simpler job for IT teams and network security specialists.
Alignment of the Goals of the IT Department with the Overall Business Goals of the Organization
The main reason why organizations opt for COBIT 5 is because of the ease of use. It can easily align the IT processes and goals with the overall business goals that the company wants to achieve and work towards achieving them. The integration can help with organizational success because the organization works more holistically towards achieving goals instead of separately as individual departments.
Improving the Quality of Information and Insights for the Organization
COBIT 5 helps organizations generate meaningful insights that they can use to increase the value of their deliveries. This can be really helpful for companies to improve their existing processes as well. Overall, when the processes improve and the organization creates more value with its deliveries, the business has increased its successful endeavors.
Risk management
Security services have accumulated a total market share of $64.2 billion in 2019, and this market is only going to grow in the future. Risk management is a big part of cybersecurity, and COBIT 5 provides measures for organizations to successfully manage and reduce the risks to their enterprise. This is a big help to companies as they can reduce additional resources that would have otherwise gone into using other risk management processes and software.
Final Thoughts
COBIT 5 has come with many benefits to organizations, and COBIT 5 principles should be adopted to manage a successful IT governance and management framework. Certified COBIT 5 professionals can help with adopting and implementing the framework to ensure successful execution in the organization. Popular IT Security and Governance certification courses are clearly the need of the hour to implement and utilize the system effectively. Some of them are:
