A seminar series focusing on IT Governance Risk and Compliance (IT GRC) conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) concluded recently on a highly successful note with a large number of professionals from both the accounting and non-accounting spheres in attendance.
The seminar series totaling five evening seminars featured six resource persons who spoke on a number of key areas related to IT GRC including security in a changing landscape, information security management, IT Governance & Strategy, business continuity management, IT general controls, application security and vulnerability management.
The participants found the highly educative seminars a very timely initiative which was also an eye opener to many as it covered an area seldom spoken in the industry.
The resource persons who delivered the seminars included, Sujith Christy - Secretary – ISC2 Chennai Chapter/Board member ISC2 Colombo Chapter and Director of Layers 7, Wasantha Perera - ISC2 Sri Lanka President and head of information security and compliance at the Colombo Stock Exchange, Janindu De Silva - Manager IT security technology advisory services of PricewaterhouseCoopers Sri Lanka, ISACA Vice President and head of IT security and compliance and principal consultant at LOLC technologies Parakum Pathirana, KPMG Manager - IT Advisory Buddhika De Alwis and KPMG Senior manager IT Advisory Mahendiran Prashanthan.
The CA Sri Lanka IT Faculty which spearheaded the seminar series under the guidance of the IT Faculty Chair Channa Manoharan, has meanwhile decided to conduct follow up sessions targeting specific industries in the near future on the same subject.
Plans are also afoot to commence a certification programme at CA Sri Lanka to help provide professionals a recognized international qualification in the IT security field.
CA Sri Lanka President, Sujeewa Rajapakse said the institute was continuously making efforts to educate its stakeholders on various trends and issues facing all sectors including in IT. “This is a new initiative aimed at educating accounting professionals on the importance of IT GRC,” Rajapakse said.
CA Sri Lanka Chief Executive Officer Aruna Alwis noted that the seminar series was a fresh effort aimed at enhancing the ICT knowledge of members and the general public and similar programmes will be held in the future too for the benefit of members and students of CA Sri Lanka.