From our Chapter President...

November 2008
 

On behalf of the chapter, I want to recognize Rich Ridewood, our education committee chairperson, for his outstanding work in organizing and coordinating the “Auditing Oracle Database Security” seminar held recently at Platform Lab. Through Rich’s effort, this low price event was sold out! One of our chapter goals is to provide economical educational and CPE opportunities to ISACA members. Rich hit the mark on this one!

I also want to thank Matthew T. Davis and Matt Franko from SecureState for their presentation on “Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance” at our October meeting. Matt and Matt did a nice job outlining the PCI framework. Their presentation slides are on our website at http://www.isaca-centralohio.org/index.htm

The ISACA Central Region Presidents’ Council Meeting was held recently in San Antonio, Texas. The invitation to attend this annual meeting is extended to regional ISACA chapters. I am always honored to represent the Central Ohio chapter as we have a very strong and active leadership team. In being exposed to other ISACA chapters, I have found that the educational programs and opportunities we provide are second to none.

I want to extend an invitation to our members to become involved with local chapter activities; whether it’s a newsletter article, speaker recommendations or assisting with chapter administration, the professional, leadership and networking opportunities, the chapter has them all.

As many of you may know, I am in the process of section hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. To date, I have hiked 500 miles of the 2,100 mile distance. The annual trip normally entails hiking 100 miles over a seven day period. Walking through the woods 10 hours a day for seven days in a row provides for the opportunity to reflect on work without the chaos that normally surrounds us a different perspective can be attained.

On my hikes I carry a small digital recording device, and on day 5 of this years hike (after walking nearly 80 mile), I spoke the following into the recorder:
“…I am going to make an analogy between project management and hiking the Appalachian Trail. One of them is, “don’t fight the forest”! That is, when one of those trees grabs you, especially a rhododendron, you can’t fight back, the tree is too strong, and you just won’t win. So you need to backup and grant the tree…and ease through it.

When you are hiking, your hiking stick will get caught between rocks or between roots; and if you keep going and bring your hiking stick with you, you can break your hiking stick. So you need to back-off and slow down and pull your hiking stick out gracefully. Similarly at work, and with project management, if someone with higher authority asks you to do something, even though there is very little benefit to it, sometimes you have to not fight it and just do it because it’s easier to do it than to fight it, regardless of how non-beneficial the task is.

Also, marbles on the trail. During this hike a lot of acorns are falling from the oak trees, fresh falling, and they are falling constantly. They are plentiful and like marbles. You just have to be very careful when you run into a bunch of them, you need to change your stride and walk very gently so you don’t slip and fall, because they are very precarious. Similarly, in project management, when you see some situations come up that are precarious, you need to delicately proceed through them…”

The moral of the story: I can remove my body from the workplace, but not my mind.

I look forward to seeing you at our November 13th meeting.

Brian O’Brien, CISA
President, ISACA Central Ohio Chapter.