Darren Thomson works as a Senior Director with the Symantec Global Services organization. He is currently responsible for the development and delivery of IT Risk Management practices to our global clients.

Since joining Symantec in July, 2003, Darren has run various consulting groups and has worked with our clients to improve their IT risk postures and improve their IT operational efficiencies using forward thinking and innovative consulting techniques. Before joining Symantec, Darren worked at The Morse Group, a European systems integrator focused on the design and implementation of critical I.T. systems in the Financial Services, Telco and Media sectors. His final position at Morse was as their Group Technical Strategist, focused on "next generation" server and storage technologies. This role brought Darren into contact with many of today’s leading edge companies.

A citizen of the UK, Darren is a published author, his latest work being “Delivery Utility Computing: Business Driven IT Optimization” (ISBN 0-470-01576-4). He was educated in Hertfordshire, England and now holds several I.T. related qualifications including ITIL Practitioner and Management of Risk (“MoR”) accreditations from the UK Office of Government Commerce.

Presentation
IT Risk: The Invisible Enemy for Enterprise Architecture
In today’s business landscape an I.T. disruption can totally disable a company's ability to function, resulting in a revenue disaster not to mention a damaged reputation. Research shows that 62% of organisations expect a regulatory breach and major information loss in the next 5 years, and 61% of organisations admit they are not highly effective at governance and compliance. Companies are aware of the catastrophic consequences and the likelihood of an IT disruption, yet few have undertaken the task of identifying where their vulnerabilities lie and implemented a strategy to manage these.

In this presentation, we shall look to address these issues, covering:

• IT Risk as the invisible enemy, why we should all be aware.
• How should companies address IT Risk? An insight into the “holistic” risk assessment approach.
• What is the value that can be found by organisations performing risk assessments?
• How can companies implement a successful IT Risk management programme, to minimize vulnerabilities and enable them to protect themselves?

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