Customer Reviews

The IT Regulatory and Standards Compliance Handbook: How to Survive Information Systems Audit and Assessments

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I purchased this book hoping, and judging by the title and page count, that it would be helpful in updating our IS department's policies and procedures. I wanted a reference that would help us include the relevant parts of SOX, HIPPA, PCI, COBIT, and the rest of the alphabet soup of regulations and standards into our processes.

Unfortunately, this book is more a guide for beginner IT auditors. It took about 10 minutes for me to realize this, so the fault is mine for not examining the TOC and sample pages more thoroughly before I purchased it. I decided to gleam what I could from it, then pass it on to our Internal Audit department.

As I read the chapters that seemed germane to my project, it became clear that the book was not very well written or edited. I am not a grammar snob; the writing is disjointed, and the grammatical and typographical errors are so frequent they are distracting. I do not recommend this book for beginner auditors because there are better publications available (see the ISACA bookstore online).

I really had hopes for this one.... Very disappointed. First of all, the material is basically a mix of tools one can use (which is helpful) and overarching organizational rhetoric that is as misplaced as it is nonsensical. Secondly, the editing is SO BAD that it makes it impossible to read more than a paragraph. An example: "Permisions be inconsistently applied when the permissions are retained in moving a file is moved to a new directory[sic]" page 400. Absolutley save your money.

If you work in the information technology field - this is a must have book! It is a complete guide to preparing your company for a compliance audit! It takes you from procedure and process to the audit itself!

As I went through this book, I picked up a lot of great information. It covers the relevant laws that we all need to think about!

Dale Liu