The IT Governance Institute (ITGI) is releasing and update of Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) on December 16.

A "significant update" is how the ITGI is calling the changes.

COBIT is a framework of authoritative and internationally accepted set of generally accepted practices to help companies increase the value of IT and reduce related risks.

COBIT although IT centred has become more important since the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Section 404 of the legislation requires companies to confirm the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting.

As IT has become ever more important to financial matters, having a coherent framework is a big stepping stone to SOX compliance.

COBIT in its current incarnation pre-dates SOX. The new version has been 10 years in the making and is the first since 2000.

 "Executives realize the significant impact information has on the success of their enterprises and the increasing governance responsibility they possess to ensure that success," said Erik Guldentops, CISA, CISM, a management consultant in Brussels, Belgium, and a member of the COBIT development team since inception. "The new edition of COBIT provides good practices and links upward to support the IT governance requirements of executives and boards, while also linking downward to address the more detailed requirements of those responsible for solution and service delivery. This provides further support to optimize IT investments, ensure value delivery and mitigate IT risk in a transparent manner." 

New to Version 4.0 are:

*analyzes how detailed control objectives can be mapped to the five IT governance domains to identify potential gaps
*Harmonizes COBIT to ITIL, CMM, COSO, PMBOK, ISF and ISF 17799
*Clarifies key goal indicator (KGI) and Key Performance indicator (KPI) relationships
*Links business goals, IT goals and IT processes

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