As we continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ISACA® Journal, I want to take the opportunity to highlight the evolution of the Journal from its humble beginnings to the robust publication that it is today and look forward to what ISACA® members can expect in the future. The ISACA Journal is consistently cited by ISACA members as one of the most valued benefits of their membership package.
The trajectory of the Journal mirrors that of ISACA itself. In the beginning, the association served few, and its output was small. As the decades progressed, however, ISACA branched out and created credentialing programs, increased thought leadership output, grew the number of chapters worldwide and continued its mission to serve the professionals within its community.
As senior vice president of publishing, I have the proud distinction of having the Journal under my purview, and I consider it one of the crown jewels of ISACA thought leadership and knowledge output. The staff that produces the Journal has fine-tuned the processes and increased the quality and output of articles—all to the benefit of ISACA members.
The Journal’s purpose is to deliver thought leadership and practical use knowledge to professionals in the audit, risk, information security, privacy, IT and emerging technology domains. And now ISACA is focusing on digital trust as those domains coalesce to serve the larger digital trust community.
Fifty years ago, the Journal was introduced as a newsletter created, managed and executed by volunteer professionals. In 2007, the management of the Journal was transferred to ISACA Global staff. Over time, the number of articles, quality and production values of the ISACA Journal have steadily increased.
Similarly, guidance output in the form of learning opportunities, publications, books, white papers, audit programs, podcasts, tools, and even hands-on labs has grown. Today, ISACA’s digital trust professionals have a wide array of thought leadership resources available to aid them in their professional roles, tackle new issues that may arise and help them learn about emerging technologies—both so they can investigate whether they are appropriate to adopt and how to manage them once adopted.
As we continue into the next 50 years, ISACA will deliver content across a spectrum of delivery types, including blogs, vlogs, webinars, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, credentialing programs and more to benefit ISACA members in their work and to aid them in their career development. ISACA’s goal is to continue to deliver content, but also to find new and creative ways to deliver that content to meet the needs of our long-standing constituency and to appeal to digital natives.
The Journal began as a labor of love with a few dedicated volunteers who wanted to give back to their profession while also providing helpful commentary and thought leadership. This labor of love continues. While ISACA Global manages the creation of each Journal issue, none would be possible without the myriad of volunteers who work on each article—from the authors themselves who submit articles to the robust pool of volunteer reviewers who ensure each article’s accuracy, continuity and relevance for the intended audience. My sincere thanks to all who have volunteered and dedicated their time and expertise to the ISACA Journal over the last 50 years. You are what makes the Journal one of ISACA’s crown jewels.
SHANNON DONAHUE | PH.D., CISM, CDPSE, CISSP
Is senior vice president of publishing responsible for leading ISACA’s learning and credentialing offerings, including the Certified Information Systems Auditor® (CISA®), Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control® (CRISC®), Certified Information Security Manager® (CISM®), Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT® (CGEIT®), Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer® (CDPSE®), and the CSX Cybersecurity Practitioner (CSX-P) certifications. She also is responsible for leading ISACA’s content and framework development along with editorial and publishing efforts, including the ISACA Journal and the COBIT® suite. Donahue has more than 25 years of experience in IT and information security and 15 years of experience leading content development. Prior to joining ISACA, she had roles as information security officer at Harper College (Palatine, Illinois, USA), where she was responsible for all information security and voice operations. She also served as a senior technical architect with AT&T, where she spent nine years handling security and network incident response along with disaster recovery for global managed service customers.