An article in Network World, an IT news and information site, claims that companies are at greater risk then ever due to lack of IT risk management tools. Network World interviewed the VP and head of risk management at SwissLife, Urs Fischer, who said that IT risk is difficult to quantify and there is a lack of serious tools to deal with it.

In an earlier report, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) cites the root cause of a scandal such as Societe Generale's recent losses was the ability of a rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel, to thwart IT risk controls.

Scott Crawford, an EMA researcher, points out a fascinating trend in today's up-and-coming generation of business professionals who have grown up with technology, and are therefore fluent in IT and business, like Kerviel. This reinforces the need of risk professionals to match their business and technological expertise with insight into how technology poses some of the greatest business risks of all, and how technology can be more effective in controlling and reducing business risk.

"Many executives see the management of risk in IT as a secondary issue in business risk management, particularly when compared to a global credit crisis that today seems to be risk management job number one," says Crawford. "Tell that to Societe Generale, where at its worst the alleged scale of fraud was greater than the GNP of Kuwait."

Pearl Gabel