What is IT governance?
IT governance is a strategic issue for all companies that use IT, whether it is in the cloud, in a hybrid environment or on prem in a data center.
IT governance is used to define, manage, coordinate, control and monitor your company’s IT strategy and activities. The aim is to ensure that your company works effectively and efficiently in the IT department, administration and within IT-using specialist departments in order to support business objectives using IT technology and minimize risks.
Index
IT governance vs. IT compliance
Many consulting firms offer you IT governance as a product. This is never IT governance, but IT compliance. This is a sub-area of governance and looks at IT compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.
The development, implementation and monitoring of security measures and guidelines ensure that legal requirements are implemented. However, IT compliance alone is not enough to bring you safely into the digital world, and looking at individual products is always problematic, as it does not ensure an overall view of IT and the interaction between applications.
A look at the entire IT structure in order to record overarching IT compliance guidelines is an important aspect, as this is the only way to ensure that all data processing is GDPR-compliant and also complies with other rules. There are a number of concepts that should be implemented.
The eleven focal points of IT governance. Compliance is just a part of it.
IT strategy
Your organization’s IT strategy determines what you focus on within information technology and data processing. When defining the IT strategy, a number of complexities are considered in addition to IT compliance:
- IT portfolio management regulates which solutions you use and what you focus on.
- The IT architecture and standardization describes which standards and concepts are used in your organization.
- The entire budget is determined and regulated within IT investment and budgeting. In IT risk management, you determine how you deal with risks and what measures you take against them.
- With IT innovation and improvement, you describe your improvement programs and cycles.
- IT performance measurement defines key figures and regulates monitoring in order to be able to react quickly to changes and problems. IT communication and transparency is the building block that regulates communication between IT and other departments and describes how IT wants to position itself within the company.
The procedure
How should they proceed to implement successful IT governance? You need to be clear about your maturity level and existing IT landscape, and identify the points that are most important to ensure legal security and functionality.
The maturity level analysis shows you, where you absolutely need to rework and where your next steps should go. The overview of the IT landscape enables you to develop governance across all aspects of your IT infrastructure and software map.
Identity governance vs. IT governance
Identity governance is defined by centralized, rule-based control over the management of identities and access to them. It not only promotes the security of information technology in companies, but also the adherence to compliance guidelines.
FirstAttribute provides a range of software solutions designed to optimize the management of identities in both on-premises Active Directory environments and in the cloud.
FirstWare’s IDM portal is an integrated solution for identity and access management (IAM) that enables the automated management of users and their authorizations, whether on-prem or in the cloud.
This portal integrates all facets of identity and access management and enables centralized access to identity and directory services.
The my-IAM Cloud Identity Management platform for digitalization focuses on the integration and management of both internal and external identities in Microsoft Teams integrated apps, such as my-IAM PeopleConnect.
About FirstAttribute AG
FirstAttribute AG is an independent German cloud service and software company with a focus on Identity & Access Management (IAM) for AD and M365/Entra ID.
Find out everything you need to know about our software solutions and services here. Contact us if you want to update and accelerate your identity and authorization management and are looking for a customized IAM solution in a hybrid IT world.
