Chapter 1. Introduction

This is a book about governance, risk management, and compliance management of a large modern enterprise and how the IT infrastructure, in particular the Oracle IT Infrastructure, can assist in that governance. The IT infrastructure both presents a risk and also provides the infrastructure to mitigate and manage that risk. The IT infrastructure must be shown to be in compliance with policies, laws, and regulations, and assists in establishing and confirming that compliance. We have written this book from the perspective of big GRC. There have been many solutions springing up around fashionable pieces of the compliance problem. At the start of the Sarbanes gold rush, it was document management. For a while that was the management of the close process. Then for a very long time it was segregation of duties. These are all important components. We have tried our best to take the perspective of those who are responsible for the stewardship of the company, and see the GRC problem from their perspective. We have written at length about governance To this end, our book is aimed at risk assurance professionals, executives, directors, and those who advise them. It is not an implementation manual for the GRC products, although we hope you can get the best out of the GRC products after reading this book. In this book, we have discussed many applications and technology products that are not in the GRC product family. Again, we are not attempting to write an implementation guide for those products. We can hopefully show you how those products participate and assist in the governance process, how they introduce or mitigate risk, and how they can be brought into compliance with best practice as well as applicable laws and regulations.