Bi-Monthly Newsletter The Enlighten Online Jul Aug 2009 Edition. The Frere Hall, Karachi (Established in 1865 in honor of Sir Henry B.

Transcription

1 The Frere Hall, Karachi (Established in 1865 in honor of Sir Henry B. Edward Frere) Bi-Monthly Newsletter The Enlighten Online Jul Aug 2009 Edition This bimonthly newsletter focuses on ISACA Karachi Chapter s activities, achievements & announcements. It also highlights major news events happening in the IS/IT/Telecom & related sectors of Pakistan.

2 Table of Content 1 The President s Message 3 2 ISACA Karachi Offered Seminar on IT Governance 5 3. ISACA Karachi Offered CISA / CISM Review Course 6 4. First Data Captured 15% Market Share 7 5. Pakistani Firms Upgrading Partnership with Oracle 7 6. World Bank Report : Rapid growth of mobile phones 8 7. First Pakistani Mobile Chat Messenger Launched 8 9. World Bank Report : Mobile Phones growth in Pakistan Pakistani Telecom Sector growing faster then India Pakistan Rankes 9 th in Global Mobile Markets ISACA Free e-symposium ISACA upcoming international conferences Contacts of Board Members, ISACA Karachi Chapter For Feedback & Suggestions Absar Khan Chair Newsletter Standing Committee, ISACA Karachi publications@isacakarachi.org ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 2 of 13

3 President s Message ISACA e-learning Campus The CISA Online Review Course is available on the ISACA e-learning Campus. This interactive, web based course was developed to provide Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA ) exam candidates and ISACA members with an efficient and cost-effective tool for exam preparation and performing information systems audits and reviews. Continue... For more information, please visit ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 3 of 13

4 President s Message Waqar Khan President ISACA Karachi Chapter ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 4 of 13

5 ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 5 of 13

6 ISACA Karachi Chapter Offers CISA/CISM Review Course ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 6 of 13

7 Country Highlights IT, IS, Telecom & related sectors World Leader First Data captured 15% market share in Pakistan Global technology leader in information commerce 'First Data' has captured over 15% market share in Pakistan, with full range of payment card & loan processing services, products, fraud & risk management and highly experienced people. First Data opened its office in Karachi in August 2008 with full range of payment card and loan processing services, merchant acquiring solutions, ATM and pointof-sale management, fraud & risk management to Pakistan's financial institutions. Khurram Gul Agha, Country Manager, First Data Pakistan, said that we are very pleased with the strategic decision to open office in Pakistan and look forward to working with financial and retail partners throughout the country", First Data helps different businesses, such as merchants and financial institutions, to process electronic payment transactions across all modes of payments, safely and efficiently. With operations in 37 countries, First Data serves more than 5.4 million merchant locations and more than 2,000 card issuers and their customers across the world, he added. Solution offered are fraud detection and prevention services at every stage of the payments life cycle from application, activation, authentication and pre-transaction, through to transaction and beyond". First Data processes more payments globally than any other provider, with 33.9 billion global merchant transactions in 2007, across 66 countries, enabling customers to efficiently gather, integrate and understand transaction data across payment types and regions. More than 27,000 experts employed world-wide including professionals based in Pakistan. He said that entry in the fast growing Pakistan market reflects First Data's strategy of developing local presence in major markets around the world to deliver its global payment solutions. More Pakistani firms upgrading partnership with ORACLE (OPN) Four more Pakistani organizations, A.F. Ferguson & Co, Jaffer Brothers (Pvt) Ltd, KPMG Taseer Hadi & Co, and Techlogix Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd, have upgraded their memberships in the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). Jaffer Brothers (Pvt) Ltd and Techlogix Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd are now a Certified Advantage Partner (CAP), the highest membership level in OPN, while A.F. Ferguson and Co, and KPMG Taseer Hadi have achieved Certified Partner (CP) status. The upgraded memberships entitle Jaffer Brothers (Pvt) Ltd, A.F. Ferguson & Co, and KPMG Taseer Hadi to a higher level of marketing and sales engagement through business development initiatives, empowering tools and resources to reach and expand into new markets, access to broader technical content and an increased level of the product support so that superior services can be extended to their customers. ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 7 of 13

8 Country Highlights IT, IS, Telecom & related sectors Rapid growth of mobile phones in Pakistan World Bank Report Islamabad In recent times, there has been a rapid increase in the use of new technologies to increase access to financial services in many countries including Pakistan, reports World Bank in its annual book let said. As per report, this has included the widespread use of smart cards and of mobile telephone network. In Pakistan, mobile phone penetration has increased at a rapid pace recently. Half of Pakistanis including women have access to a cell phone together with rural areas (two-thirds in urban areas) while more than 86 percent of men have their own cell phone, 40 percent of women do. These figures suggest a much higher access to cell pone (available in the household or within the extended family) than the figures for regular usage. The pervasive use of mobile telephony creates a ready market for financial services delivery over mobile phones. Use of cell phones is still mostly confined to voice services (for 78.5 percent of cell phone users). Basic data services such as SMS, are used by 40.2pc cell phone users with higher usage in urban areas (45 percent) than in rural (36-7 percent). SMS usage is also more frequent among men. Close to two-thirds of Pakistanis (60.8 percent) have their own prepaid mobile phones. Majority of men pay for themselves, while the majority (84.5 percent) of women s call phone expenses are paid by their spouse or family. This limits somewhat the usefulness, World Bank (2008) concludes, on the basis of cross country analysis that mobile technology does expand financial access. First Pakistani Mobile Chat Messenger Launched Pakistani net users can get MiM (Mobile Instant Messenger) Max99 which is Pakistan's first java-based mobile instant chat messenger, compatible with most of the GPRS enabled mobile phones, pocket PCs and other mobile devices. This mobile messenger is almost similar like mig33, yehba etc., however, Max99 messenger is more cheaper and consumes less battery. Max messenger comes with smaller download size but numerous features. It has got Chat-rooms and group chat features as well. One another very nice thing of max messenger is that it also has multikicking feature. Every user can create twelve IDs which he can call in chatroom for vote casting to kick multi ids of other users. With the efforts of max team they have created very clean and friendly environment. Slanders are dealt very quickly, users can kick bad users from chatroom using kick vote method. ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 8 of 13

9 Country Highlights IT, IS, Telecom & related sectors Rapid growth of mobile phones in Pakistan World Bank Report Habib Bank Limited (HBL) is Pakistan's oldest commercial bank, established in Over the years, HBL has expanded its network of branches, and has become the largest private-sector bank with over 1,450 branches across the country, and a customer base exceeding five million with international presence in 25 countries, The bank is expanding its presence in principal international markets, including the UK, UAE, South and Central Asia, Africa and the Far East. (ATM switch), Rendezvous (financial middleware) and Vision (card production system) to meet its requirements. HBL has gone live with Avanza's solutions for UAE operations, becoming the very first institution to have successfully moved from a distributed environment to a centralized one. The ATMs at HBL UAE were migrated from the legacy ATM controller to Avanza's Nimbus in a seamless manner, and without any interruption in operations. HBL UAE has now become among the first EMV acquiring banks to be certified by the UAE switch. HBL previously had a distributed infrastructure, meaning every country had its own ATM controller box. While this model previously made sense, the centralization of HBL's international data processing in Pakistan now provides an opportunity for the bank to consolidate its various country ATM controllers into one system in Pakistan. All countries' ATM operations can now be monitored from within HBL's head office. This solution is also scalable enough to incorporate future requirements. To achieve this objective, HBL selected Avanza Solutions to provide it with a multi-channel, multi-institution and comprehensive end-to-end next-generation infrastructure for its international operations. HBL chose Nimbus ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 9 of 13

10 Country Highlights IT, IS, Telecom & related sectors Pakistan telecom sector growing faster than India Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Dr Mohammad Yasin has said that Pakistan telecommunication sector has been growing faster than that of India with over 62% teledensity, encouraging the foreign direct investment (FDI). He said that India lagged far behind Pakistan with 37% teledensity as compared to 62% in Pakistan. "Telecom analysts around the world still believe in Pakistan to be a lucrative market and Business Monitor forecasts that mobile subscribers in Pakistan would hit 100-million mark by next year", Yasin said. "PTA has taken a number of initiatives which are proving to be very helpful, especially in the field of broadband proliferation, LDI reemergence, & WiMax popularity", said Dr Yasin. He further said that PTA was focusing on growth of broadband. Currently the number of subscribers is 0.4 million approximately, whereas growth rate of broadband services was 146 percent in He also said that other technologies like Evolution Data Only/Evolution Data Optimised (EVDO) and WorldCall introduced in Pakistan by PTCL are gaining good momentum. He said that Mobile internet held a very bright future in a country where mobile penetration as more than 57 percent. "However, the only setback that our mobile subscriber has is low literacy rate that hampers use of internet. Also, the lack of availability of local content is another reason, which could pose problems for wider adoption of internet by mobile community," he added. Regarding improving 'Average Revenue Per User' (ARPU), he said that improvement in ARPU's data service like m-banking or mobile internet would be the solution. "Maybe, 95 million mobile users will be waiting to open their accounts", he added. Pakistan Ranks 9 th in Global Mobile Markets 1H 2009 Update In Global Wireless Market the top 10 nations by number of subscriptions are: China, India, US, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Pakistan and Italy. The market continued to grow rapidly especially in India, China & Pakistan Overall, the global subscriptions penetration is above 64%. During 2009, services revenues further tilted towards data services, increasing 21% from 2008 EOY. For some leading operators, data is now contributing over 40% of the overall revenues. However increase in data ARPU is not completely offsetting the drop in voice ARPU for most operators. From the true and tested SMS messaging to the new services such as Mobile Advertising, Social Networking, Commerce, Mobile Wallet, and others, different services helped in adding billions to the revenues generated in US continues to lead Japan and China in total mobile data revenues by a healthy margin. ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 10 of 13

11 ISACA Free e-symposium Mobile Communication When Disaster Strikes Your Business Continuity Management Plan Date: Tuesday, 27 October 2009 Time: 11:00 AM 2:00 PM EDT / 15:00 18:00 UTC Registration is now open at Earn 3 CPE credits. Bookstore Update New ISACA research and peer-reviewed books offered in the ISACA Bookstore include: COBIT and Application Controls: A Management Guide* Accounting Information Systems:Controls & Processes NMAP Network Scanning: The Official NMAP Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning Business Resumption Planning, 2nd Edition (* Indicates those published by ISACA/ITGI) Visit the ISACA Bookstore at or see the ISACA Journal Bookstore insert for additional information. To determine the time the e-symposium will be held in your city, please go to Under Pick date and cities enter New York as city no. 1, and the city closest to your location as city no. 2. Click Show timetable for results. e-symposium Overview With the growing popularity of wireless devices that connect business users to their corporate data comes the inherent risk of reliable connectivity and data security. But what happens when users are suddenly and unexpectedly unable to connect, and the security of their data is compromised? In this month s ISACA e- Symposium, speakers will discuss making available and securing mobile communication. You will learn how to build a sound business continuity management plan and get helpful best practices on how to deal with a mobile technology disaster. e-symposium Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) All live events are archived for on demand viewing. Detailed information on the ISACA e-symposium including registration information, on-demand (archive) viewing instructions, and an explanation of CPE credits can be found by visiting the ISACA webcasts page at and clicking on the FAQ link located in the left navigation pane. If you are interested in presenting at a future e-symposium, sponsoring an e- symposium, or if you have suggestions for e-symposia topics, please contact ISACA at webcasts@isaca.org. Contact the Bookstore at bookstore@isaca.org or ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 11 of 13

12 ISACA International Up Coming International Conference / Training Week Calendar Sep Oct 2009 Latin America Leadership Conference Latin America CACS Info. Security & Risk Mgmt. Conference IT Gov., Risk & Compliance Conference Date September September September October 2009 Location San Jose, Costa Rica Las Vegas, Nevada, USA Henderson, Nevada, USA New 2009 ISACA conference and educational event dates have been released. For the latest information, please visit ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 12 of 13

13 List of Board Members, ISACA Karachi Waqar Ahmed Khan President Ghazali Wasti Chair Academic Relations Abdul Rasool Hoodbhoy Vice President Kamran Hassan Meer Chair Marketing Muhammad Irfan Iqbal Secretary Fazal Hussain Gaffoor Chair Communications Kashif Alam Khan Treasurer Shahid Ahmed CISA Coordinator Huma Pasha Immediate Past President Farooq Wahab Naiyer CISM Coordinator Kamran Nishat (VP) Chair Special Projects Waqar Wahidi Chair IT Governance / Cobit waqar_wahidi@yahoo.com Musharraf Zaman Khan Chair Membership sbsca@cyber.net.pk Absar Khan Chair Newsletter Standing Committee publications@isacakarachi.org ISACA Karachi Newsletter Jul Aug 2009 Edition Page 13 of 13