ISACA Singapore Chapter

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ISACA Singapore Chapter

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ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 1

Introduction

ISACA Singapore Chapter is a volunteer-run non-profit association, representing ISACA members based in Singapore. The chapter organizes both educational and recreational activities to benefit ISACA members in their professional pursuits in the areas of IT Audit, Governance, Compliance and Cybersecurity.

Setup in 1983, over 30 years ago, in Singapore, the chapter has grown to over 2000 members. Many of its members hold at least one ISACA certifications, including the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) and Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT). With the introduction of the Cybersecurity Fundamentals Certificate launched by ISACA, the chapter is poised to play a bigger role in the Cybersecurity community in Singapore.

In pursuit of these objectives, the chapter organizes both regular and ad-hoc activities for its members. Many of them support the CPE points requirements of ISACA certifications, providing a convenient and effective way to satisfy the continuing educational aspirations of its members. Key activities include:

 Monthly Seminars & Networking Dinner

o Organized monthly, this three-hour activity includes a sumptuous networking dinner, followed by an educational talk on a topic of interest. Participants get to network with one another, as well as, to pick up new knowledge in support of their career objectives.

 Annual conference – GTACS

o This flagship conference of the Singapore chapter aims to provide an opportunity to local members to participate in knowledge-rich sessions, led by local and international experts in the areas of Governance, IT Audit, Compliance and Cybersecurity.

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o The chapter organizes certification review courses to help certification aspirants gain essential knowledge required to pass the ISACA certification examinations. Experienced and knowledgeable practicing professionals are engaged to deliver these courses.

 Recreational Networking activities

o Organized throughout the year, these events provide opportunities for members to meet and network with one another, in a relaxing atmosphere. Past events include movie nights, social outings and dinner.

Chapter Administration

For many years, the chapter has relied on professional secretariat services. In such arrangements, the service provider undertook to provide manpower to perform common secretariat and administrative services as required by the chapter. With the increased number of activities organized by the chapter, along with a corresponding increase in the scale and complexity, this arrangement is no longer tenable. Essentially, the chapter requires:

 A dedicated team of administrators to provide continuity in following up the chapter activities and administrative activities.

 Higher level of service to be provided to members and partners alike.

 Continuity in following up on keeping accounting records of the various activities.

To further exacerbate the problem CEMS, the then secretariat service provider, informed the chapter in May 2014 that it was unable to continue providing secretariat services to ISACA Singapore Chapter due to the lack of manpower and the complexity of the chapter’s requirements.

In June 2014, when the current board took office, it decided to move ahead with a plan to setup the chapter’s own office and to hire its own staff, dubbed as ‘Secretariat 2.0’. In July 2014, the chapter established its very own office at 27 West Coast Highway in a serviced office environment. The chapter identified and hired 2 staff to manage the chapter’s

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ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 4 administration. Due to the tight labour market and the dearth of suitably qualified personnel, the chapter saw several staff turnover, which hindered some of the chapter’s planned activities. However, the chapter board took it in its stride and ensured its major activities were carried out.

It was only in March 2015, when the chapter finally managed to secure the services of 3 dedicated staff who have served the chapter till now. Moving forward, the chapter hopes to deliver on its intention to improve the chapter’s operations, thereby ramping up its activities, as well as, to provide more and better services to its members.

K. Wayne Snipes Award – Special Mention

For the year 2014, the Singapore Chapter has been awarded the inaugural Special Mention for the K. Wayne Snipes Award. In winning this award, ISACA recognizes the Singapore Chapter’s efforts in being one of the chapters in strong contention for the K. Wayne Snipes Award.

Industry Outreach

The chapter remains connected with the industry, by engaging with technology leaders as well as relevant industry associations. In particular, the chapter has engaged with the following through various activities :

Company Engagement

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ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 5 ACL Sponsorship of 1 Monthly Seminar and GTACS 2015

HP Sponsorship of 1 Monthly Seminar and GTACS 2015

Relevant industry associations play a crucial role for the chapter through joint activities and reciprocal arrangements to allow members of both parties to participate in each other’s activities at special rates.

A key event was the signing of a new MOU between ISACA Singapore Chapter and the IT Service Management Forum – Singapore Chapter. Mr. Vinay Jain, president of iTSMF Singapore Chapter signed the MOU with ISACA Singapore Chapter on the first day of GTACS 2015 at Sands Convention Centre, on 3 March 2015.

Industry Collaborations

The chapter continues to maintain relationships with relevant organizations, both non-profit and technology leaders. In particular, through these collaborations, the chapter seeks to obtain privileges and value for its members, either in the form of complimentary access or discounted passes for ISACA members.

Where offered, the chapter has set up a presence in major local conferences and seminars, including:

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ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 6  CLOUDSEC Congress Singapore (2-4 September 2014)

 Cloud Expo 2014 (28-29 October 2014)  Interpol World 2015 (14-16 April 2015)

These opportunities allow the chapter to publicize the awareness of ISACA as an association, as well as its offerings, including COBIT 5 and the 4 certifications.

Monthly Seminars

ISACA Singapore Chapter continues its highly successful Monthly Seminars & Networking Dinner series. Each month, the chapter invites relevant speakers to provide educational talks to members. At the same time, members get to network among one another. In the period 2014/2015, we were able to work with key technology leaders who were kind to support the chapter’s activities through sponsorship of the event, creating value for chapter members.

Through this monthly activity, members are able to clock valuable CPE hours in support of their various ISACA certifications.

Date Topic Speaker

17 Jun 2014 Are you Ready for FATCA? Rohit Johri 21 Jul 2014 Anatomy of a Breach. Evolve your

Approach to Cybersecurity.

Unmesh Deshmukh

19 Aug 2014 Static Analysis in Software Development: Software Security Perspectives

Tin Aung Win

16 Sep 2014 Continuous Monitoring – The Missing Piece to Security Operation (SOC) today

Matthias Yao 8 Oct 2014 Introduction and Overview on

Enterprise Governance of IT with CoBIT 5

Leonard Ong

18 Nov 2014 Being Relevant: What you need to know about next-generation audit technology

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Date Topic Speaker

16 Dec 2014 Business IT Integration Is Key for Successful Enterprise Architecture Implementation

Aaron Tan Dani

23 Jan 2015 Building a PCI Compliant Application Security Program

Sandeep Nain 10 Feb 2015 Intellectual Property Protection for the

IS Professional

Rohit Johri 16 Apr 2015 Analysis of Privileged Users' Activities -

An Auditor's Look at Key Issues

Samuel Lim

A total of 540 participants have attended the monthly seminars, which translate to 1,080 CPE points generated by the chapter for members’ continuing educational benefits.

The chapter continued to make available to its members, the Annual Pass 2015, which allows holders to attend all the monthly seminars at an attractive rate. This not only provides members with an opportunity to earn valuable CPE points on their certifications, but also to do it at an affordable cost. From the chapter’s perspective, this arrangement increases the attendance rate of the monthly seminars, ensuring its continued success. The chapter would like to thank its members who have supported the chapter by purchasing the Annual Pass 2015.

Workshops

The chapter organizes workshops at competitive rates for members in support of the chapter’s mission to provide meaningful educational opportunities. In the year 2014/2015, the chapter organized the following workshops.

Date Workshop

16-18 June 2014 Combined COBIT 5 Foundation Certification + Information Security Workshop

23-24 Aug 2014 COBIT 5 Foundation + Information Security Workshop 25-26 Aug 2014 COBIT 5 Assessor Course

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Date Workshop

27-28 Aug 2014 COBIT 5 Implementer Course

29 Aug 2014 COBIT 5 Assessor & Implementer Exam

Certification Review Course

In support of the ISACA 4 certifications, the chapter continues to organize certification review courses. Review courses were organized in May, August and November 2014, and May 2015. Generally, CISA, CISM and CRISC review courses continue to be in demand. The chapter will continue to review the format of its certification review courses to increase participation and to help certification aspirants to successfully pass the examinations.

In H2 2014 and H1 2015, the following review courses were organized by the chapter. They include :

Course Dates

CISA Review Course May & Aug 2014, May 2015

CISM Review Course May 2014

CRISC Review Course Nov 2014

CISA Review Course (Customized for Standard Chartered Singapore)

7-9 Oct 2014

Membership

Members’ Movie Night

Members were given a treat on 31 July 2014 at Golden Village, Vivo City for the screening of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie. Over 120 members and guests were present, making the event a huge success.

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Members’ Year-End Dinner 2014

The annual Members’ Year-End Dinner 2014 was held on 25 November 2014 at the Hard Rock Café in Resorts World Sentosa. Over 100 members attended the event, and the general feedback was great.

Membership Breakdown

The membership of the chapter has maintained its membership numbers well into 2015. As of 30 March 2015, the chapter membership figure is 2190, which is 4% higher than the same period in 2014 when the number was 2101.

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ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 10 Certification Breakdown (Data as at 1 May 2015)

GTACS 2015

The Governance, Technology Audit, Control & Security (GTACS) conference 2015 was held on 3-5 March 2015 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre. This year, the conference was a success, which saw over 120 delegates with many prominent figures in attendance. In particular, Mr. Robert Stroud, ISACA International President 2015, and Mr. Matthew Loeb, ISACA CEO, were in town to join the local ISACA community on the first day of the conference. Mr. Loeb delivered the Opening Address, while Mr. Stroud presented a Keynote presentation.

CGEIT, 89

CRISC, 244

CISA, 1240 CISM, 444

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ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 11 Key highlights of the conference include presentations by prominent speakers from Information Security Forum (ISF), Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and Microsoft.

Mr. Steve Durbin, Managing Director of ISF delivered the conference workshop on Cyber Security on 5 March 2015. A total of 30 participants signed up for the workshop, which has been a success.

Member Services

With the setup of the chapter’s own secretariat, the board has initiated various services, some of which were either new, or discontinued earlier. The following services have been initiated so far :

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Chapter Library

The chapter has restocked its library with the latest offerings, mainly from ISACA International, including the review manuals for the four certifications and their respective review questions and supplements. To meet the needs and demands of members, the chapter has acquired additional copies of the books for them to be loaned out to members.

Job Postings

The chapter has initiated a job postings page within its website. Available positions communicated to the chapter will be posted for the information and interest of its members. The positions described are those which are relevant to the general body of ISACA members in Singapore. Members whose organizations which are sourcing for talent can contact the chapter for the postings to be posted on our website.

Financials

The chapter increased its membership dues from US$20 to US$40 for the year 2015. This was mainly due to increased cost of running the chapter activities, especially in the area of hiring personnel and also a dedicated office space.

In spite of this, the chapter needs to explore and find additional sources of income to support the various activities and benefits to its members. For example, the movie night and members’ dinner were either free or heavily subsidized. In this regard, the chapter has successfully acquired these funds from the sponsorship of GTACS conference, provision of email blasting services to members, workshops and sponsorship of the monthly seminars.

I am happy to report that the chapter, for the year 2014, has manged a surpulus of over $35,000. This is especially impressive, given the general increase in the cost of operating in Singapore, and the fact that the increased membership dues were not fully factored into the figures for 2014.

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Moving Forward

As a volunteer-run non-profit organization, ISACA Singapore Chapter has grown tremendously in the last 32 years. As the world becomes more connected, and more dependent on technology for critical and strategic purposes, ISACA members are poised to play a leading role in ensuring the efficient and effective use of Information Technology. With the current focus on Cybersecurity, and the efforts of ISACA International, the chapter hopes to be a prominent agent of change in Singapore’s landscape. Let’s work together to further our profession and our cause.

Yours sincerely,

John Lim

, CISA CISM CGEIT CRISC President (2014/2015)

ISACA Singapore Chapter