The cloud can simplify your IT infrastructure, but it also can complicate audit and compliance. This isn’t a deal-breaker; it’s more just another complication that must be identified and dealt with.

“There are many approaches and nuisances to cloud computing. Benefits to the enterprise as well as risks will vary depending on the types of service and deployment models selected, writes co-author Peet Rapp in a paper published by the ISACA titled “Cloud Computing: Business Benefits With Security, Governance and Assurance Perspectives.” He describes those models in the paper.

There are three main complications that make the cloud challenging from a security, compliance, and audit perspective: (1) Lack of direct control, (2) Location transparency, and 3) the Public nature of the cloud. more

Happy New Year, GRC professionals, vendors, and consultants.

Before I dig (deeper this year, as you’ll soon see) into governance, risk management, compliance, and ethics trends and practices this year, I want to share some insights from Deloitte LLP CEO Barry Salzberg.

I connected with Salzberg over the year-end break to discuss a topic appropriate for the recent season of giving: the state of U.S. education, and what it means for the U.S. companies and U.S. competitiveness.

Salzberg offers a unique perspective on the issue. In addition to leading one of the world’s top professional services firms, the Brooklyn native is a first-generation college graduate.

Some bleak statistics motivated our conversation. more

We may be starting a new decade, but a few things remain the same. In particular, cash remains king as we head into 2010. Large companies have stockpiled record levels of the stuff, notes Standard & Poor’s senior index analyst, Howard Silverblatt, in this blog post from November 16, 2009. As of mid-November, cash levels at the companies in the S&P 500 were nearly 10 percent ahead of the record $773 billion they were holding at the end of the second quarter of 2009. “Companies now have more cash than they ever made in any one-year period,” Silverblatt writes. The record amounts of cash are a result of cost-cutting, along with slashed dividends and reductions in stock buybacks, Silverblatt notes.

The intensified focus on cash management at many companies likely played a role, as well. More than half – 53 percent – of the 350 respondents to KPMG’s 2009 cash survey had implemented a working capital improvement survey. That was a jump of 43 percent from a year earlier. more

Let’s look back at the last ten years of applying enterprise performance management methodologies, and then speculate about their next ten years.

THE PAST DECADE

The beginning of this past decade witnessed more experimentation with techniques like strategy maps, balanced scorecards, product and customer profitability analysis, and driver-based budgeting. Much of this was done with spreadsheets with increasing use of commercial software. more