Certificate
Course Outline
Objective:
The primary goal is to help you pass the CISA examination on your first attempt.
Information System Auditing Process (21%)
Deliver audit services in accordance with IT audit standards to help the organization protect and control its information systems.
- 1.1 Develop and implement a risk-based IT audit strategy that complies with IT audit standards, ensuring key areas are covered.
- Plan specific audits to verify that information systems are protected, controlled, and provide value to the organization.
- Execute audits in accordance with IT audit standards to achieve planned audit objectives.
- Report audit findings and make recommendations to key stakeholders to communicate results and drive necessary changes.
- Conduct follow-ups or prepare status reports to ensure management has taken appropriate actions in a timely manner.
Governance and Management of IT (17%)
Provide assurance that the necessary leadership, organizational structure, and processes are in place to achieve objectives and support the organization's strategy.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the IT governance structure to determine if IT decisions, directions, and performance support the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Assess the IT organizational structure and human resources management to determine if they support the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Evaluate the IT strategy, including direction, and the processes for its development, approval, implementation, and maintenance for alignment with the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Assess the organization’s IT policies, standards, and procedures, and their development, approval, implementation, maintenance, and monitoring processes, to determine if they support the IT strategy and comply with regulatory and legal requirements.
- Evaluate the adequacy of the quality management system to determine if it supports the organization’s strategies and objectives in a cost-effective manner.
- Evaluate IT management and monitoring of controls (e.g., continuous monitoring, QA) for compliance with the organization’s policies, standards, and procedures.
- Assess IT resource investment, use, and allocation practices, including prioritization criteria, for alignment with the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Evaluate IT contracting strategies, policies, and contract management practices to determine if they support the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Evaluate risk management practices to determine if the organization’s IT-related risks are properly managed.
- Evaluate monitoring and assurance practices to determine if the board and executive management receive sufficient and timely information about IT performance.
- Evaluate the organization’s business continuity plan to determine its ability to continue essential business operations during an IT disruption.
Information Systems Acquisition, Development and Implementation (12%)
Provide assurance that practices for acquiring, developing, testing, and implementing information systems meet the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Evaluate the business case for proposed investments in information systems acquisition, development, maintenance, and retirement to determine if it meets business objectives.
- Assess project management practices and controls to determine if business requirements are achieved cost-effectively while managing organizational risks.
- Conduct reviews to determine if projects are progressing according to plans, adequately supported by documentation, and if status reporting is accurate.
- Evaluate controls for information systems during requirements, acquisition, development, and testing phases for compliance with organizational policies, standards, procedures, and external requirements.
- Assess the readiness of information systems for implementation and migration into production to determine if project deliverables, controls, and organizational requirements are met.
- Conduct post-implementation reviews of systems to determine if project deliverables, controls, and organizational requirements are met.
Information Systems Operation and Business Resilience (23%)
Provide assurance that processes for information systems operations, maintenance, and support meet the organization’s strategies and objectives.
- Conduct periodic reviews of information systems to determine if they continue to meet the organization’s objectives.
- Evaluate service level management practices to determine if service levels from internal and external providers are defined and managed.
- Evaluate third-party management practices to determine if providers adhere to the control levels expected by the organization.
- Assess operations and end-user procedures to determine if scheduled and unscheduled processes are managed to completion.
- Evaluate the information systems maintenance process to determine if it is effectively controlled and continues to support the organization’s objectives.
- Evaluate data administration practices to determine the integrity and optimization of databases.
- Assess the use of capacity and performance monitoring tools and techniques to determine if IT services meet the organization’s objectives.
- Evaluate problem and incident management practices to determine if incidents, problems, or errors are recorded, analyzed, and resolved in a timely manner.
- Evaluate change, configuration, and release management practices to determine if scheduled and unscheduled changes to the production environment are adequately controlled and documented.
- Assess the adequacy of backup and restore provisions to determine the availability of information required to resume processing.
- Evaluate the organization’s disaster recovery plan to determine if it enables the recovery of IT processing capabilities in the event of a disaster.
Protection of Information Assets (27%)
Provide assurance that the organization’s security policies, standards, procedures, and controls ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information assets.
- Evaluate information security policies, standards, and procedures for completeness and alignment with generally accepted practices.
- Evaluate the design, implementation, and monitoring of system and logical security controls to verify the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.
- Evaluate the design, implementation, and monitoring of data classification processes and procedures for alignment with organizational policies, standards, procedures, and applicable external requirements.
- Evaluate the design, implementation, and monitoring of physical access and environmental controls to determine if information assets are adequately safeguarded.
- Evaluate the processes and procedures used to store, retrieve, transport, and dispose of information assets (e.g., backup media, offsite storage, hard copy/print data, and softcopy media) to determine if information assets are adequately safeguarded.
Requirements
- 5 years of professional experience in IT auditing or security
- Foundational knowledge in IT operations, business support via information technology, and internal control.
The required work experience can be reduced to 4 years for candidates holding a bachelor's degree, or to 3 years for those with a master's degree.
Candidates are permitted to take the exam even if work experience requirements are not yet met. However, the required experience must be obtained within 5 years of taking the exam. Failure to meet this condition within 5 years will result in the exam score being considered invalid.
Target Audience
- Auditors
- IT system auditors
- IT infrastructure managers,
- Risk management or business continuity managers,
- Professionals responsible for all aspects of IT management
Testimonials (2)
The way to receive the information from the trainer
Mohamed Romdhani - Shams Power
Course - CISM - Certified Information Security Manager
Overview of Risk topics and preparing for exam