Data Governance & Privacy Best Practices to Lower Risk and Drive Value
Today’s business leaders—which includes chief data officers, line of business owners, and other enterprise data stewards—are being asked to uncover more value from enterprise data. Of course, the most valuable insights often come from using data that is valuable in itself, providing a target for abuses internally and potential exfiltration to bad actors, if not governed appropriately. Keeping data safe and appropriate in its use, without violating consumer and data owner trust assurance, is often the key blocker when approving digital transformation programs to move forward.
Whether your goal is to expose personal data to analytics for building a customer loyalty program or migrating data to the cloud to scale out applications, or perhaps building a self-service data marketplace to enable enterprise-wide value creation, all of these programs introduce risks from data exposure. It’s unlikely that business leaders will get the “green light” to unleash personal information or similar IP if they have no insights into how exposure can be a liability or generate the expected ROI.
Data Governance is your Key to Accelerate DX, CX, and lower OpEx
An enterprise-wide data governanceprogramis your key to accelerating digital transformation programs such as cloud migration, improving customer experience with trust assurance, and lowering operating expenses when data use is optimized, in line with your corporate policies.
In today’s world with more data being available from more sources, it’s no surprise that we look for an automated andscalable methodologyto manage all this information. Datagovernanceis a discipline that encompassesthe rules, policies, roles, responsibilities, and tools we put in place to ensure our data is accurate, consistent, complete, available, and secureto enable trust in the outcomes we plan to achieve.
From my experience ,these are three best practices around governing data to maximize the success of business transformation agendas, reduce uncertainty, and ensure safe and appropriate data use.
1. Improve the quality and reliability of sensitive personal data to support a 360-degree view of your customer
There are many techniques and strategies for this. You need to understand what a customer buys, how the purchase is made, and with whom. As a result, you can acquire identity information such as name, ship-to address, type of item, size ordered, and more. You can also correlate and link records. By linking records, you will have a more complete view of your customer, improve data quality, and enable more appropriate and actionable use by closing gaps in reliability for improved insights.
2. Ensure a consistent set of definitions, terminology, and metadata
Data governance needs to ensure the use of consistent, standard naming conventions, and clean, concise definitions of data elements. But how is this done? By bringing together the right stakeholders—data stewards, business leaders, data architects and others—who need to speak a common language and gain transparency into workflow in order to codify policies for operationalizing and automating data governance controls.
3. Protect against unauthorized access to data and govern appropriate uses
We are all required to address and meet data privacy regulations around personal data use that are increasingly mandated by law. Putting regulatory compliance aside, industry statistics demonstrate that improving trust assurance that reinforces loyalty and confidence in sensitive data use is good for business. Again, data governance plays a critical role in assuring all companies can define their protected data, using data discovery and classification techniques—and set processes, policies, and enforceable operational controls to ensure the security and privacy of that data for authorized access and appropriate exposure.
While these are the fundamentals, there is a lot of nuanceand room for discussion as tohow this can be done most efficiently, given limited time and resources. And this often requires relying upon automation, AI and machine learning to accelerate insights, do more with less, and improve data governance programs that optimize results based on enterprise goals for data use.
Leading global organizationsareleveragingInformatica’s integratedand intelligent Data Governanceand Privacy solution portfolioto proactively add value to their bottom line today. It is about getting the right information to the right people at the right time, enabling the entire organization to be proactive, in order to identify and act on new opportunities and plan for the best results, instead of reacting to unanticipated surprises. Governing data is a responsibility that belongs to every person in an organization to lower risks by handling data responsibly, and there is a clear need for common solutions and governance models to protect and share data on different levels throughout every company.
As a part ofany company’ssuccess, daily interactions with business-critical data are vital. We are all responsible for dataprotection while we unleash new opportunities in parallel. If you have a better solution, know a more efficient way to manage the data, or find ar oadblock to resolve, you should feel empowered to act on that knowledge. You can make a difference!
Where Do I Start to Accelerate Data Governance and Privacy Best Practices to Optimize Results?
A common question for those getting started with data governance is, “where to startfor the greatest impact?”
Whether launching a new program within an organization that lacks maturity or picking up an inherited a collection of “pieces and parts” from a predecessor, it depends on each organization’s priorities and business model for understanding data and deploying the most relevant data controls. Even with varying agendas across industries and organizations, there are a consistent set of best practices which can help avoid missteps and get the most from budgets and resources.
With a rich legacy of data management solutions that span over 25 years, Informatica has built up a wealth of experience, applied globally across leading organizations, and stand ready to help you with your journey. Whether safely unleashing data in a marketplace, migrating workloads to the cloud with lower risks, reinforcing customerloyalty programs with stewardship best practices for trust assurance, or beyond, we can help you achieve success and leave risks behind.
Some ways you can learn more include:
- Register to attend our webinar, “Data Governance & Privacy Best Practices to Lower Risk and Drive Value”
- Read“Data Privacy for Dummies”
- Download your copy of our eBook, “Just Enough Data Governance”
How Can We Help You Achieve Success?
We’d love tofindoutmore aboutyour goals—learn more about how Informatica Advisory Services can help you on this journey here.
