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Data Governance Simplified—Everything You Need To Know
In today’s environment, data is the new oil. Data can be seen as the new transformative, wealth-creating power that once fueled the growth of the Rockefellers and the Pickens of the world. Despite this, many businesses are still having difficulty realizing the true potential of their data assets. However, the answer might be better data governance. Data governance assists businesses in understanding how and where their data assets are used. This is an effort to break down Data Governance to its very core elements for you. Read on as we outline all you need to know about good data governance.
What is Data Governance?
Data governance is the process of regulating the availability, accessibility, integrity, and security of data in corporate systems based on certain data standards and policies to control data usage. Data Governance ensures the authenticity of data and prevents it from being misused by both within the organization and outside. Given the stringent regulations and public sentiment regarding data privacy, it is imperative to have such measures in place. Effectively managing data also involves drawing valuable insights from data and optimizing business operations and processes accordingly. Each organization must establish clear processes to automate Data governance.
Why You Should Care
Data is the most important asset of any organization, so data governance is an important aspect of any data-driven business. Keeping data secure is of the utmost importance. You may already know that most cyber-attacks are focused on acquiring sensitive data and not destroying data. In other words, the main purpose of a cyberattack is not to destroy data but to acquire it. Data governance helps to maintain a secure data environment. Some of the obvious benefits to good data governance are:
- Increased efficiencies with the ability to establish processes and reuse data
- Easier to comply with data regulations
- Improvement in Data quality and accessibility
- Improvement in business processes as a result of better insights gathered from the available data.
- Maximizing data-driven decision making
Data Governance: Purpose
The purpose of data governance is to establish a unified vision for data and then systematically align the organization, data architecture, and culture to support that vision. Establishing a unified vision for data is the key to good data governance. Aligning the organization, data architecture, and culture to support this vision takes time and may be very difficult. But you must dive in with both feet and ensure that your organization isn’t left behind at this transformative intersection of business and technology. It is essential to determine the Data Governance goals for your organization and build up your strategies and processes to align with your goals. Some of the important goals are:
- Establishing Internal Data Accessibility Rules
- Risk Mitigation
- Implementing Compliance Requirements
- Reducing Data Storage and Processing Costs
- Using Data Analytics to optimize business processes.
Data Governance: Controlling The Information Flow
With most business operations being cloud-based, managing and monitoring the flow of information flow both within the organization and to/from another entity is integral to good data governance. A threat to data security is ultimately a threat to your core business. Recently, The electric pickup truck startup backed by Amazon and Ford, Rivian, poached employees from Tesla who reportedly downloaded files containing ‘trade secrets’ for its next-generation battery technology and the supercharger network. Previously, Tesla also sued a former employee who reportedly stole the source code for Tesla’s renowned Autopilot software and took it to Chinese Electric car startup, Xpeng. Managing and monitoring information flow is easier said than done. Even companies as large as Facebook failed to do that effectively, as evident by The Facebook Files, The Wall Street Journal’s latest exposé about the tech giant. It is imperative to preserve the integrity of data assets and ensure their availability as well as usability.
Data Governance: Principles
Data governance includes creating and enforcing policies for data storage, access, and retention. Data governance is an important component of organizational strategy and effectiveness because it provides information organizations can use to determine how resources should be allocated or distributed. Effective Data governance requires participation and accountability across the board, from Engineers with access to product roadmaps to executives at the top level. The core principles for Data Governance are:
- Standardized Processes and Regulations.
- Ensuring that the data is available, usable, and taken into account when making important business decisions.
- Maintaining quality control to ensure the quality and authenticity of data.
- To promote ownership and accountability within teams to better manage data.
- . Thinking about data as a tangible asset of the core business that you must protect.
- Enabling transparency within the organization to catch breaches.
Data Governance: Key Roles
Data governance is a continuous, iterative process, and it is imperative to promote ownership and accountability. Some of the key Data governance roles are:
- Data Steward: A data steward is an oversight or data governance role within an organization and is responsible for ensuring the quality and fitness of the organization’s data assets
- Data Architect: Data architects are usually senior employees with a ton of experience capable of defining the data standards and principles for the organization.
- Data Quality Manager: Quality managers are responsible for ensuring the implementation of quality management processes. They may also be responsible for designing and deploying dashboards to monitor data quality.
- Data Owner: Data owners are responsible for the access management of data within the organization. They are also responsible for maintaining the integrity of said data.
- Steering Committee: The committee is comprised of C-level executives or senior consultants and provides a broad direction for the organization’s data governance goal
How Atidan Technologies Can Help You Manage Your Data
Atidan specializes in Managed Cloud Services, Custom Development, and premium staffing services with a proven track record of customer satisfaction. At Atidan, our goal is to help you realize the full potential of today’s cutting-edge technologies. With a presence in over 14 countries, We have software engineers that can help you maximize your technology investments and bring new efficiencies to your business. We have highly experienced recruiters with a strong technical background across North America, the EU, and APAC time zones. We provide continuous monitoring, Data Protection, and Security and Risk assessment to ensure that your data assets are wellprotected and accessible.
