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Cobit is a Framework, developed by ISACA and is a framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT.

COBIT 5 incorporates the latest development in enterprise governance and management processes, and provides globally accepted principles, practices, and tools to help increase the delivery of value from ICT investments.

COBIT 5 integrates all major frameworks, standards and resources, (e.g. KING III, Val IT, Risk IT, ITIL® andother related standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The benefits of using Cobit5 is:

• it assists all organisations, irrespective of the size of the organisation, to maintain high-quality information to support business decisions
• assists in achieving strategic goals through the effective use of ICT resources
• assists organisations to achieve operational excellence through reliable, efficient application of technology
• assits in monitoring and managing ICT-related risks
• assists in optimising the cost of IT services and technology
• assists organisations to comply with relevant laws, regulations, contractual agreements and policies

ICT Governance Implementation is a life-cycle approach and it is recommended that ICT Governance is implemented in phases over a period. Many private and public institutions address the implementation of ICT Governance as a once-off project which is "ticked-off". That is not ICT Governance implementation.

A phased approach means that an organisation starts with preparing the environment (governance enabling structures and culture) by, for example, developing a governance strategy, introducing governance structures, policies, and procedures and creating an enabling environment through change management. This first phase will also include a maturity assessment of your organisation's current business processes and operations. All these preparation will assist in determining the road map for implementing governance.

Business will recall that the King Commission was set up for improving business ethics in South Africa, especially listed companies on the JSE, in establishing Corporate Governance principles in line with the Companies Act no 71 of 2008. Since the first King report, subsequent reports were developed as guidelines for businesses to improve their financial statements, business ethics and operations. KING III is the latest King report and dealt specifically with Information Technology (IT) due to the high cost of ICT solutions. One of the major implications of KING III with regards to ICT is the principle that the Board are directly responsible and accountable for ICT Governance. Many organisations in the past have left ICT governance as a project of the ICT section. For successful ICT governance, top management needs to be actively involved. Due to these principles, the position of a delegated Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO) on the executive management level is more and more a necessity.

Many businesses, when starting-up, opt for a gmail, yahoo or microsoft email address. These are all "free" web-based email providers. However, you do not have the option to personalise your domain emails (the name after the @ ).

Our proposal is the registration of a domain name (yourbusiness.co.za, yourbusiness.biz, .com, .info etc.). If your business is still small, you don't need a mail server yet as this will give you at least 25 email mailboxes to be utilised. Having your personalised domain name email address is not only more "professional", but also shows your clients that you have a web presence.

As your business grow, your business can gradually implement a mail server which provides unlimited mailboxes and many other mail server features like forwardings, spam control, filtering etc. Note: most domain hosting providers also do offer these services (spam filtering and forwarding) without having to opt for a mail server.