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Implementing COBIT 5 at ENTSO-E By Greet Volders, CGEIT, COBIT Certified Assessor and Kees de Jong, CIPM, CISSP, SIPP/E
COBIT Focus | 11 April 2016
The IT director of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) undertook a
pragmatic approach toward implementing COBIT®
5 at the organisation beginning in 2014. Now, 2 years later, it is
time to share this successful collaboration between the internal IT department, the business organisation and the
external consultants and to share how the results were achieved.
Taking a practical approach towards implementing a programme for governance of enterprise IT (GEIT) based on
COBIT 5, ENTSO-E focused on prioritising the processes, the development of these processes and—most
important—the practical issues to overcome during the implementation of a new way of working.
About ENTSO-E ENTSO-E represents 42 electricity transmission system operators (TSOs) from 35 countries across Europe
(figure 1). ENTSO-E was established and given legal mandates by the EU’s Third Legislative Package for the
Internal Energy Market in 2009, which aims at further liberalising gas and electricity markets in the EU.
ENTSO-E promotes closer cooperation across Europe’s TSOs to support the implementation of EU energy policy and
achieve Europe’s energy and climate policy objectives, which are changing the very nature of the power system.
Through its deliverables, ENTSO-E is helping to build the world’s largest electricity market, the benefits of which will
be felt by all those in the energy sector as well as by Europe’s overall economy, today and into the future. 1
IT Strategy Background at ENTSO-E ENTSO-E requires the following to be in place to meet its objectives:
Infrastructures to enable the passage of huge electricity flows through Europe
A 10-year network development plan
Publication of summer and winter outlook reports for electricity generation
A legal framework for handling energy in Europe
An information platform that provides free and equal access to fundamental data and information on pan-
European wholesale energy generation, transmission and consumption
Technical cooperation between TSOs who are responsible for the bulk transmission of electric power on the
main high-voltage electric networks and provide grid access to the electricity market players2
Figure 1—ENTSO-E Customers and Energy Sources
DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE
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Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
Some of the most notable and relevant characteristics of ENTSO-E include:
Multi-national staff representing 20 different nationalities
Highly professional, motivated, educated and knowledgeable staff
Open to and able to cope with change
Political components to organisation
Facilitate more than 100 working groups cover topics from legal issues to IT architecture design with members
from across Europe meeting between 3 and 8 times per year3
Figure 2 shows the organisational structure with particular emphasis on the IT function.
Figure 2—ENTSO-E IT Function Structure
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Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
The IT manager reports to the 3 governance levels in the organisation (figure 2):
The assembly is made up of representatives from the 41 member TSOs from 34 European countries at the chief
executive officer (CEO) level.
The board consists of 12 elected members.
The ENTSO-E secretary general is the highest executive responsible for the daily operation of the secretariat.
As the IT director began to develop the IT strategy, issues to overcome included:
The current IT manager started in September 2013, and he was the third in a relatively short period.
The board had insisted 1 year earlier on a new IT strategy.
As a result, a concept IT strategy had been defined with the help of 6 TSO IT managers
At the beginning of 2014, the perception at the ENTSO-E Management Team was that the IT strategy was 99%
ready, but the new IT manager wanted to change it and make it more specific. This required some delicate
manoeuvring.
IT Strategy Development The revised IT strategy was based on a governance structure with 3 focus areas, which were presented to and
approved by the assembly. Figure 3 shows the governance structure.
Figure 3—ENTSO-E Governance Structure
Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
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More detailed targets were then defined in the IT strategy, including:
Pragmatic selection and implementation of best practices and standards
Reviewing all major IT suppliers
Moving all data centre activities to 1 permanent supplier
Moving all application operations to 2 or more permanent suppliers
Focusing on size of IT department (number of staff, ratio of internal/external personnel, refocused data
management development activities)
The overall objective was to develop an IT organisation ready to support the TSO members in the best possible way.
The selection of best practices and standards was one of the detailed targets defined by the IT strategy. The
selection results included:
ITIL as the guiding framework for IT Service Management (ITSM). All IT staff would participate in the foundation
training and obtain their certification, so that a solid knowledge base will be present within the IT staff.
Project management based on PRINCE2, in order to introduce a more structured project management
approach, which will result in more clearly documented relation between the business benefits and the IT
deliverables at the beginning of each project. This decreases the risk of not delivering on time and within
budget.
ISO 27002:2013 as guide for information security, in order to comply with external requirements regarding
security management at ENTSO-E.
Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK) for data management to support the move from a Network
Code delivery organisation towards a data management support organisation.
COBIT 5 for having an overarching governance and management framework and to enable ENTSO-E to
identify the major IT processes that need to be in place to fulfil the enterprise goals. (Notably, COBIT was not
selected in January 2014; the decision was made to start working with COBIT 5 in June 2014.)
Progress Management A structure was set up to manage the progress of this IT strategy (figure 4).
Figure 4—Progress Management Structure
Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
The project steering group consisted of 2 internal managers, the IT manager and the IT strategy programme
manager, who reported to this steering committee.
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The working group, responsible for data strategy, consisted of representatives from several TSOs, managed by the
internal data management team.
The peer reviews from chief information officers (CIOs) of 6 TSOs were important to validate the IT strategy and
follow the progress and outcome of this IT strategy programme.
The IT manager implemented monthly meetings with his peers to understand what was required from a business
perspective and also keep them in the loop. This was (and still is) done through monthly face-to-face meetings.
After a few months, the need to develop a dashboard to plan and monitor the progress of this program became
clear, and resulted in the development of the dashboard tool described in the next section.
Prioritisation of the Processes by Goals Cascade For the prioritisation of the IT processes, the COBIT 5 Goals Cascade was applied and the team developed its own
tool to manage the different steps in this cascading process.
Most often, the Goals Cascade is used to select those COBIT processes with the highest priority, to develop and
implement, or to perform a process assessment, starting with the goals at the enterprise level. In this case, it was
used to define the prioritisation of the COBIT 5 processes in order to prepare a plan and ensure focus on the right
processes.
This was a 6-step selection process:
Step 1—Identify relevant business drivers for the IT processes.
Step 2—Prioritise the enterprise’s IT processes.
Step 3—Perform a preliminary selection of target processes based on the above prioritisation.
Step 4—Confirm the preliminary selection of target processes with the project sponsor and key stakeholders.
Step 5—Finalize the list of processes.
Step 6—Document the scoping methodology in the IT strategy document.
Step 1: Identify Relevant Business Drivers To identify the business drivers, the IT manager had several discussions with different business partners and
stakeholders, explaining that it is not about IT change, but enabling the business to work better. While doing this, he
had to change the language from IT language to business language, in order to “speak their language”, and also to
highlight that this is not about technology, but about information—their information.
To define the enterprise goals, the IT manager organised meetings with the 6 TSO IT managers to identify the
external priorities and with the IT strategy steering committee to identify the internal priorities and then to come to
a consensus within the ENTSO-E management team, based on the internal and external priorities.
This resulted in the following selection of enterprise goals:
External priorities, defined by the 6 TSO IT managers:
1. Financial transparency
2. Customer-oriented service culture
3. Business service continuity and availability
4. Operational and staff productivity
5. Skilled and motivated people
Internal priorities, defined by the IT strategy steering committee:
1. Stakeholder value of business investments
2. Optimisation of service delivery costs
3. Optimisation of business process functionality
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4. Optimisation of business process costs
5. Managed business change programmes
Balanced, and final, priorities as approved by the ENTSO-E management team:
1. Stakeholder value of business investments
2. Financial transparency
3. Business service continuity and availability
4. Optimization of service delivery costs
5. Optimization of business process functionality
6. Operational and staff productivity
These priorities were selected from the list of generic enterprise goals, as listed in the COBIT 5 framework.4
Step 2: Prioritize the Enterprise’s IT Processes The final list of enterprise goals was used to start the Goals Cascade. Based on the 2 mapping tables
5 found in the
COBIT 5 framework, a tool through which the cascade was run automatically after having indicated the 6 selected
goals was developed.6
Step 3: Perform a Preliminary Selection of Target Processes The first selection resulted in the following priority range using different colours to indicate the priority of each
process (figure 5).
Figure 5—Preliminary Priority Range of Target Processes
Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
Steps 4 and 5: Confirm the Preliminary Selection With the Project
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Sponsor and Key Stakeholders and Finalize the List of Processes The preliminary priority range of target processes was not found by the management team to be very clear, so
another way of presenting the priorities, with 3 priority levels, was developed. In addition to the presentation
format, some of the high-priority processes seemed illogical places to start.
For example, problem management had a high priority, compared to e.g., service request and incident
management, configuration management and change management. Without a proper incident management, it is
very difficult (if not impossible) to develop and implement problem management, since the analysis of the incidents
is used as a possible source to identify problems. And in order to solve problems, changes can be initiated, so
proper change management is needed to solve the problems identified.
So, with the IT manager, we re-evaluated the importance and priorities. The outcome was the figure with the
revised prioritisation overview (figure 6)
Figure 6—Revised Process Prioritisation Overview
Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
Step 6: Document the Scoping Methodology in the IT Strategy
Document The developed and applied approach was documented in the IT strategy document, which was used to further
detail the actions needed to implement the IT strategy. In addition to developing the IT processes, priority focus was
put on data management. Based on the priorities and other regulations ENTSO-E needed to comply with, a road
map was developed.
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The first step in defining the road map was to define the roles and responsibilities for the major data management
stakeholders. Figure 7 shows that ENTSO-E will lead IT in directions and priorities of the data management road
map, the work groups will inform IT on what to do, and the IT manager will ask for advice and reviews from the TSO
IT managers and the governance boards to ensure that all data management initiatives are well aligned with other
initiatives within the TSO member community.
Figure 7—Roles and Responsibilities for Major Data Stakeholders
Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
The data management strategy will be based on the following principles:
ENTSO-E management will approve projects. Decisions within the projects will be made by the project steering
committee.
Work groups will define requirements to support stakeholders needs and to create benefits realisation:
o The project manager will present the work groups to ENTSO-E management.
o Work groups will be supported in the beginning of a project through a high-level impact analysis from data
management perspective.
o Work groups will be supported by IT to define business requirements, if needed.
o Work groups will inform IT on related regional and local initiatives.
o Work groups will be involved in the design of the solution and will be informed on the proposed solution to
support the requirements of IT.
TSO IT managers will review the solution from an integration perspective and TSO collaboration perspective:
o TSO IT manager will review the data management reference architecture, identify integration risk and
quality risk, and review whether proposed solutions could be supported by TSOs.
o The IT manager will advise ENTSO-E on risk identified by the TSO IT managers.
o TSO IT managers will inform their board on advice and risk factors as well.
The governance board (composed of committees, expert groups and TSO managers) will perform quality
reviews and control the delivery process. The results of their analysis will be forwarded to the project steering
committee or the ENTSO-E board, depending of their findings. On request, IT will present their data
management initiatives and/or solutions to these boards.
ENTSO-E management
Direct, Evaluate and Monitor
TSO IT managers
Solution Review
Work Groups
Stakeholder Needs
Benefits Realisation
Governance Board
Control Processes
Quality Review
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How to Visualize the Plan and the Progress In the beginning of the program, an overview of all 37 COBIT processes was developed, which was available on the
extranet and managed on the intranet, to show the progress in a simple, visual way—through links to the process
descriptions and other supporting documents.
In addition to this overview, detailed plans for each process were developed. As working from the detailed plans
became cumbersome, one dashboard for the 37 processes was developed.
The starting point for the dashboard was the COBIT 5 Process Reference Model. The dashboard is completely
managed in a single Excel-file (figure 8).
Figure 8—Process Progress Dashboard
Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
For each COBIT 5 process, a specific action plan was developed with targets for five specific questions. These
questions were related to the five levels of the COBIT Process Assessment Model (PAM) (figure 9).
Figure 9—Example status for 1 process
Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
IT Management Framework
Score in % Absoluut
score
Question Level 2 Level 3 Level 4Level 5 Due date
100% 3 Documentation exists? 3 3 0 0 17/09/2015
100% 2 Are KPI's defined? 0 2 2 0 15/11/2015
0% 0 Is there reporting? 0 0 0 0 15/12/2015
100% 1 Is an owner assigned? 1 0 0 0 17/09/2015
100% 1 Are users trained? 0 1 0 0 31/10/2015
80% 2,4 Is the job being done? 0 2,4 0 0 30/11/2015
100% 1 Is a supporting tool required and if yes available; if not required 100%0 1 0 0
0% 0 Are there regular verifications of the correct application? 0 0 0 0
0% 0 Cause analysis on deviating results, with corrective actions? 0 0 0 0
0% 0 Improvement actions are identified? 0 0 0 0
Total score per level 4 9,4 2 0
Total score 10,4 Total percentage per level 80% 85% 50% 0%
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The action list (figure 10) of all processes was consolidated into one sheet to make it easy for all people involved to
check the status and follow up on their own actions.
Figure 10—Action List
Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
The planning and follow-up for each achievement is also reported on a single sheet (figure 11), which is based on
the details of each process.
Figure 11—Process Planning and Follow-up
Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
The end result is the monitoring of the status of each process in the process progress sheet (figure 12).
Figure 12—Process Progress Sheet
Link Action nr Nr Date actionWhat Due date Who
APO01 APO01-01 1 17/08/15 Validate findings and score 31/08/15 GVO
APO01 APO01-02 2 07/08/15 Complete process description 11/09/15 GVO
APO01 APO01-03 3 22/08/15 Validate process description 17/09/15 KDJ
APO01 APO01-04 4 22/08/15 Define stakeholders & ownership 17/09/15 KDJ
MEA01 MEA01-02 2 07/08/15 Complete process description 31/08/15 GVO
DSS05 DSS05-03 3 22/08/15 Define implementation steps 15/09/15 KBU
MEA01 MEA01-03 3 06/09/15 Validate process description 15/09/15 KDJ
BAI10 BAI10-02 2 07/08/15 Complete process description 31/08/15 GVO
Process name Actual Due date sep/15 okt/15 nov/15 dec/15 jan/16 feb/16 mrt/16 apr/16
Documentation 100% 17/09/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
KPI's 100% 15/11/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Reporting 0% 15/12/2015 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood rood
Owner 100% 17/09/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Users trained 100% 31/10/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Job being done 80% 30/11/2015 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood rood rood
Documentation 100% 31/08/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
KPI's 100% 15/11/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Reporting 0% 15/12/2015 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood rood
Owner 100% 31/08/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Users trained 100% 31/10/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Job being done 100% 30/11/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Documentation 100% 15/10/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
KPI's 80% 15/12/2015 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood rood
Reporting 60% 15/01/2016 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood
Owner 100% 31/08/2015 groen groen groen groen groen groen groen groen
Users trained 0% 30/11/2015 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood rood rood
Job being done 50% 31/12/2015 andere kleurandere kleurandere kleurandere kleurrood rood rood rood
APO03
APO02
APO01
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Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
Increasing Knowledge and Awareness A last, but important element in this program was to increase knowledge about COBIT 5 and to map this to the daily
work within the IT department.
This was accomplished by giving periodic presentations in staff-meetings, providing presentations on COBIT and
sending the COBIT 5 Framework to the TSO IT managers.
For the internal IT department, a tool was developed that included the following elements:
A service catalogue summarising all services provided by the IT department, and divided by services for the
members and services for the internal secretariat organisation
A service level agreement (SLA) matrix listing all the services and indicating responsibilities and estimated effort
The related service definitions linked from the service catalogue
Key performance indicators (KPIs) for each service definition
An operational task list where all recurring tasks were added with notifications to the persons assigned “N” days
before the target date and on the target date
Figure 13 shows the interaction among all of these elements.
Figure 13—Overview of the Tools and Their Interaction
Process Total score Owner Process Title Level1 Level2 Level3 Level4 Level5
EDM01 15% KDJ Governance Framework Setting & Maintenance 26% 12% 0% 0% 15% 0%
EDM02 15% KDJ Benefits delivery 26% 12% 0% 0% 15% 0%
EDM03 26% NFR Risk optimisation 58% 31% 0% 0% 26% 0%
EDM04 15% KDJ Resource optimisation 26% 12% 0% 0% 15% 0%
EDM05 9% KDJ Stakeholder Transparency 26% 3% 0% 0% 9% 0%
APO01 69% KDJ IT Management Framework 80% 85% 50% 0% 69% 0%
APO02 73% KDJ Strategy 80% 91% 50% 0% 73% 0%
APO03 51% PVI Enterprise Architecture 80% 61% 55% 0% 51% 0%
APO04 7% KDJ Innovation 20% 0% 0% 0% 7% 0%
APO05 7% KDJ Portfolio 20% 0% 0% 0% 7% 0%
APO06 73% KDJ Budget & Costs 80% 91% 50% 0% 73% 0%
APO07 13% KDJ Human Resources 20% 9% 0% 0% 13% 0%
APO08 7% KDJ Relationships 20% 0% 0% 0% 7% 0%
APO09 76% GVO Service Agreements 80% 95% 75% 0% 75% 1%
APO10 57% KDJ Suppliers 80% 68% 63% 0% 57% 0%
APO11 17% GVO Quality 50% 14% 0% 0% 17% 0%
APO12 29% KBU Risk 68% 31% 0% 0% 29% 0%
APO13 47% KBU Security 80% 55% 50% 0% 47% 0%
BAI01 33% BMA Programmes & Projects 80% 36% 0% 0% 33% 0%
BAI02 13% KDJ Requirements Definition 20% 9% 0% 0% 13% 0%
BAI03 3% PVI Solutions Identification & Build 10% 0% 0% 0% 3% 0%
BAI04 59% MKU Availability & Capacity 80% 72% 55% 0% 59% 0%
BAI05 10% MKU Organisational Change Enablement 10% 9% 0% 0% 10% 0%
BAI06 73% MKU Changes 80% 91% 50% 0% 73% 0%
BAI07 7% MKU Change Acceptance & Transitioning 20% 0% 0% 0% 7% 0%
BAI08 7% JFZ Knowledge 20% 0% 0% 0% 7% 0%
BAI09 60% JFZ Assets 80% 73% 0% 0% 43% 17%
BAI10 41% JFZ Configuration 80% 47% 0% 0% 41% 0%
DSS01 85% JFZ Operations 96% 100% 75% 0% 81% 4%
DSS02 83% JFZ Service Requests & Incidents 90% 100% 75% 0% 83% 0%
DSS03 76% JFZ Problems 94% 88% 65% 0% 67% 9%
DSS04 10% KBU Continuity 10% 9% 0% 0% 10% 0%
DSS05 66% KBU Security Services 80% 81% 50% 0% 66% 0%
DSS06 14% KBU Business Process Controls 22% 15% 0% 0% 14% 0%
MEA01 55% KDJ Performance & Conformance 80% 66% 55% 0% 55% 0%
MEA02 10% KBU The System of Internal Control 10% 9% 0% 0% 10% 0%
MEA03 3% KBU Compliance with External Requirements 10% 0% 0% 0% 3% 0%
Total score
on 28 Oct.
2015
Difference
27 Nov. vs.
28 Oct
PAM level achieved
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Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
All of these tools and elements are available on ENTSO-E’s SharePoint-based intranet; some are Excel files and
others are lists or libraries in SharePoint.
Current Status 2 Years Later After 1.5 years, achievements were evaluated. This was done by going back to the original governance structure put
in place.
On a high level, the project is on track. Items of note include:
Highest priority policies and standards have been developed and these have been applied through the
processes
Moving from project mode to operational mode resulted in unexpected cost and staffing issues, which need to
be managed and solved, so there is still some work to do
The single hosting supplier program is ongoing, but no decision has yet been made
Figure 14 provides this high-level overview of the current state.
Figure 14—IT Strategy Current Status
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Source: ENTSO-E. Reprinted with permission.
A more detailed review of all major IT suppliers was completed resulting in:
Moving all data centre activities to one permanent supplier (ongoing)
Moving all application operations to 2 or more permanent suppliers (ongoing)
Focusing on the size of IT department: number of staff, ratio of internal versus external staff and a renewed
focus on data management development activities
An IT organisation ready to support the TSO members in the best possible way
A final exercise was performed to verify how well the originally defined enterprise goals were being achieved.
Essentially, it was a reverse goals cascade. It started from the percentages achieved for each of the 37 COBIT
processes and an upward calculation was performed via the IT-related goals to arrive at the achievement of all
17 generic enterprise goals.
The results of this reverse goals cascade, as of October 2015, are shown in figure 15.
Figure 15—Reverse Goals Cascade
Source: Greet Volders. Reprinted with permission.
This exercise shows where progress has been made with the business goals. In this case, the business is quite
pleased with the overall result, especially as the amount of change for the organisation was astounding.
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Author’s Note If you would like more information on the tools that were developed, or to get more detailed information, please
contact Greet Volders at [email protected].
Greet Volders, CGEIT, COBIT Certified Assessor Is managing consultant and chief executive officer of Voquals N.V., where she advises customers and regularly
conducts training and seminars related to IT governance, process improvement and IT/business alignment, quality
systems, the development and assessment of IT and business processes, and the use of standards and frameworks.
She has been an active member of several development teams for COBIT, including the COBIT Process Assessment
Model. She also specialises in the optimisation of internal processes conforming to Sarbanes-Oxley and CMMI.
Volders is a regular speaker at ISACA®
events such as seminars and trainings for the ISACA Belgium Chapter,
presentations at EuroCACS in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and the COBIT Conference in 2015, where she co-presented this
case study with Kees de Jong.
Kees de Jong, CIPM, CISSP, SIPP/E Is a senior IT director with more than 20 years of experience. Since 2013, he has been with the European Network of
Transmission System Operators since 2013, where he is responsible for implementing the IT strategy. de Jong has a
passion for developing professional, service-oriented, business-focused departments and is an experienced change
manager able to drive culture change. He has handled many difficult and complex projects, programs and contracts
whilst working for many multinational organisations such as Shell, Philips, Hagemeyer, Unilever and other
organisations on 6 continents with many multicultural teams. He has a thorough understanding (often certified) of
many frameworks, including COBIT 5 (including audit) amongst others.
Endnotes 1 European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity
2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.
4 ISACA, COBIT 5, USA, 2012, p. 19
5 Ibid., Appendix B and C
6 If you are interested in obtaining this tool, please contact author Greet Volders at [email protected].