Governance of Enterprise IT based on COBIT®5

CHAPTER 3: COBIT – FROM IT AUDIT TO GEIT

‘History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.’

Napoleon Bonaparte(1769-1821)

This brief chapter looks at the history of COBIT.

Accurate reporting on the early history of COBIT comes from Erik Guldentops, now Executive Professor at the University of Antwerp Management School (UAMS), who is recognised as the ‘grandfather of COBIT’. Guldentops told us⁵⁷ that it was in Paris in 1991 at a meeting of ISACA’s European Regional Council that he was invited to conduct research to devise a European IT audit initiative since IT audit knowledge at that time came only from the US. At that time, Guldentops was Chief Inspector at SWIFT, the international funds transfer body, where he went ...