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IS Control Objectives

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This topic is related to information systems auditing. Every organization has controls in place. Controls are normally composed of policies, procedures, practices and organizational structures that are implemented to reduce risks to the organization. The board of directors and seniors management are responsible for establishing the appropriate culture to facilitate effective and efficient internal control system. There are two aspects of controls: What should be achieved and what should be avoided. Internal controls address business and operational objectives.  Control objectives are statements of the desired result or purpose to be achieved by implementing the control activities which are in the form of processes and procedures. Control objectives apply to all controls whether they are manual, automated or combination. Control objectives need to be addressed relevant to specific IS-related processes. A control measure is defined as an activity contributing to the fulfilment of a contr
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Win them with kindness!

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  Selena Gomez in one of her song says that, "No war and anger was ever won, put out the fire before igniting. Next time you're fighting, please, kill them with kindness". With some changes in these lyrics, I would rephrase it as, "No war and anger was ever won, put out the fire before igniting. Next time you're leading a team, please, win them with kindness". Yes, with authoritative style of leadership, no leader is ever liked and loved. Be it in any field. Be it handling your kids. Be it handling your family members!  Fear doesn't work if you want your subordinates or followers to do the work for you by putting their heart in it and put their 100% in it. Kindness and compassion provides the motivation to help, presenting the leader with an array of options to pursue, like using various mentoring tactics, such as soothing and encouraging, guiding and coaching, and teaching and demonstrating. Kindness is seeing the best in others when they cannot see it
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Conference Call Tips

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Communication is an essential ingredient to success in the workplace. It has become an essential skill as organizations have adopted the remote work model recently. Hence, organizations are widely using virtual audio or VDO conference calls nowadays. A conference means a formal meeting in which many people gather in order to talk about ideas or problems related to a particular topic and a conference call is a telephone call by which a caller can speak with several people at the same time. In other words, a conference call is an online meeting that allows for more than one individual to listen in on and participate in the conversation. These virtual meetings are especially important for companies with multiple offices or who need to communicate across different areas of the country. It’s not easy to have everyone on the same page. But when you plan a conference call well and stick to some standard rules, it can go very smoothly. Here are some etiquettes and tips for making conference ca
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Effective Presentation Techniques

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Presentations can be of many different types based on purpose. It can be your weekly review meeting with customer, it can be a seminar in front of college students as a guest lecturer, it can be a presentation to launch a new product of your company when you are sales manager, it can be a presentation to explain newly invented technology, it can be an explanation of quarterly financial results of a company. It can be a group of college students presenting for their final year project or a YouTuber uploading daily VDOs or it can be simply a banner explaining your product or event or it also can be presenting project status report to your seniors. A play in theater is also an example of presentation. A book reading via podcast is also a presentation where your voice is at stake. When you are writing an article, your writing skills are at stake.  All those who are presenting something, need to have effective presentation skills to make right impact on audiences or spectators or viewers. A
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Work from home: an elusive oasis!

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Since covid pandemic, work from home has gained momentum and importance. It was the need of the hour. But what is the wisdom in sticking to the same thing when it is no longer the situation? To some extent, the travelling hurdles and travel time are eliminated, the energy of employee is saved. But is it worth sacrificing other valuable benefits of working from office just because your travel trouble is saved?  Initially, an Indian employee gets overjoyed of the idea of working from home because he had seen many Hollywood movies where the lead actor or actress is talking to boss over phone, making sandwich with another hand. They have a baby sitter who takes care of their baby throughout the day. But in my opinion, when we talk in terms of India, the 95% of Indian families, houses and mentality are yet not suitable for work from home concept. And let alone their families, the employees themselves are not competent enough for the work from home mechanism. In 85% cases, the spouse (home m
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Business Resiliency (BCP & DRP)

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Business resilience is the ability of an organization’s to adjust when the disruptions, disasters and negative incidents occur. It is the action plan which describes the steps to maintain continuous operations and protect the organization’s assets during disruptions.  An asset is anything which has value to the organization. There are many types of assets like Information assets (data files, databases), Software assets (system s/w, application s/w), physical assets (computer equipment and communication equipment), service assets (telecom, power), people assets, paper assets etc. Even company image is an asset for a company. Business resilience comprises of BCP and DRP. The possible disasters or emergencies are:  Denial of access Failure of critical suppliers Human Error Technical error Fraud, Sabotage, Extortion, Espionage Industrial action Natural disasters Viruses and other security breaches  Before understanding what is BCP and what is DRP, we will understand the difference in recov
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Shift-shock and it's treatment!

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There is a trend to name every phenomenon nowadays. Nowadays you may be hearing the word "shift-shock". However, its nothing related to shift duty (night shift, morning shift, afternoon shift etc). It is the shock one receives when the person changes the company.  In other words, I can call it as "change-shock"! Human basic nature is that it wants comfort zone and a set routine. When there are changes to it, human nature tries to oppose it. Hence, a person should be flexible enough to accommodate and adjust to unwanted changes in life. Earlier in one of my article, I covered the culture-shock topic. It is the type of shock one experiences or receives when he/she suddenly steps into a complete different or opposite culture of another country. When I read the news regarding "shift-shock", I realized that yes, there is something like "shift shock" exists and I also have experienced it. The only thing was that I didn't know that it is "shift
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