Data has become an essential asset for organizations, as it enables a more strategic performance in the market. In this scenario, data governance also gains importance, a practice that promotes the adequate and secure management of information circulating through companies.
From data governance, you ensure that your assets are kept confidential and are always available. To implement this initiative in your company, it is essential to pay attention to some specific precautions, which avoid making mistakes that could leave your business in bad shape. In this post, we are going to present the best tips to adopt data governance and get rid of any risk of information leakage in the future.
What is Data Governance?
Data governance is defined as a system of decision rights and responsibilities that involve all processes related to information produced by a company. For this, it has practices, policies, and functions on the acquisition, management, and efficient use of data. The objective of this initiative is to ensure that data mining generates maximum value for the company. In addition, it fulfills the role of attesting to the quality and security of the company’s information, defining who can access it and at what times.
To this end, this strategy is based on five principles that serve as the rule for effective data management, which are:
- Accountability: determines that there are data owners and administrators responsible for managing, monitoring, and reporting the quality levels of the information generated.
- Transparency: provides for the construction of a structure so that information is shared clearly among employees so that they are kept abreast of any changes.
- Compliance with legislation: establishes that the company must comply with regulatory standards for the use of data, in particular the General Law for the Protection of Personal Data (LGPD).
- Data stewardship: assigns a specific contributor or team to ensure data quality, keeping it accurate, consistent, complete, up-to-date, and always accessible to stakeholders.
- Quality standards: points out that, in order to be considered of quality, information must be accurate, consistent, and complete.
How Important is This Process?
With the implementation of data governance, the company starts to rationally use its information, which is decisive for efficient planning and decision-making, capable of leveraging its operational productivity and results. Some of the benefits of this practice are:
- Confidence gain: Well-enforced data governance contributes to companies’ data being consistent and reliable, which is essential for more informed data analysis and decision-making. In practice, this greater reliability also optimizes operations, allowing the development of improvements and new services.
- Ease of risk management: The policies adopted by data governance ensure the proper and secure use of data. This prevents errors from being committed in your systems and allows you to block the misuse of your customers’ personal information or sensitive information about your business.
- Improved cost control: Despite requiring initial costs for its implementation, this strategy impacts on the control and reduction of the company’s costs. This benefit comes about through the reduction of errors and rework, which usually generate more expenses for the business. The amounts saved can be applied in other areas of the company.
How to Implement Data Governance in Your Business?
The creation of mechanisms and roles that are not well-defined can bring a series of problems and insecurity to the company, instead of shielding it against errors and cyber-attacks that could expose its information. Here are the tips to implement data governance in your business:
Identify the data
1.1 Assess information flow:
The first step in implementing data governance in your business is to identify the data that flows through your company. This means assessing your information flow and categorizing the data according to their level of importance and secrecy. To do this, create a methodology that allows the evaluation of the necessary operations for data entry and what are their variables. Only then will you be able to establish rules that meet your protection needs.
1.2 Categorize data:
After assessing the information flow, categorize the data based on its sensitivity, value, and criticality to the organization.
This categorization will help you determine the appropriate level of protection and handling for each data category.
Define the rules and regulations
Once you have identified the data, it’s time to create rules and regulations to protect it. Define formal roles for employees responsible for administering and monitoring the data, determining what are the responsibilities of each and the rules to be followed for handling information. These roles should include a data owner, data custodian, and data steward.
Engage with business users to learn what data issues exist, which data are used most frequently, as well as what the impacts would be if quality issues escalated or continued.
After that, the organization can stipulate guidelines for collecting, storing and managing data, such as controlling access to sensitive information, on which platforms it can be accessed and for what purposes.
Align data governance with results
The company’s strategies and priorities must be aligned with data governance processes. For this to happen in practice, you must determine business metrics that can be adopted and executed by all professionals who work with the organization’s data. Identify the metrics that are important to your organization and determine how data governance can support these metrics. This alignment will help you measure the effectiveness of your data governance efforts.
Consider the culture
The construction of data governance policies must also be in accordance with the culture valued by the company. This initiative helps to make stakeholders aware of the measures adopted and the importance of complying with them. By involving internal users and holding them accountable for the actions that are part of data governance, you increase their confidence in the quality of information. Thus, the company also increases data productivity and starts to make better use of them in its operations.
Help employees understand their role in data protection. Ensure that they understand the importance of data governance and how it supports the organization’s goals.
Think about transparency and ethics
Keep in mind that data management is directly connected with transparency and ethics. This means knowing and putting into practice all the regulations that govern the use of data in companies, such as the LGPD, which aims at the privacy of personal data. Prioritize transparency in all activities involving data governance, keeping your team always informed about the processes to be followed, in addition to requesting consent from data subjects to use them.
Train collaborators
There is no point in establishing impeccable data governance if employees are not prepared to carry it out. Taking this into account, it is essential to train all members of your team who deal with data in their activities to comply with the data management policy to the letter. In this sense, it is also indicated to measure the level of adherence to the established policies, as well as the results obtained from the data management strategy. To achieve this, it is essential to carry out a continuous evaluation process that allows the identification of possible flaws in the system and the implementation of corrective measures. I
Final Thoughts
The integration of data governance is an intricate process that requires dynamic and frequently updated procedures to guarantee data security. Technology serves as a valuable collaborator in this endeavor, as it streamlines and maximizes the efficiency of data management. One notable tool that has proven effective is cloud management software, specifically ERP, which serves as a centralized platform that ensures optimal control over company information.
Engineering offers the Privacy Manager system to assist individuals responsible for personal data in their functions. This system not only promotes continuous data governance but also adheres to the LGPD regulations, ensuring the comprehensive protection of sensitive data.
Data governance is an ongoing process that adapts to the changes and evolution of an organization and its market scenario, rather than a finite process with a definitive conclusion. Thus, it is essential to develop a dynamic process that undergoes frequent updates to ensure the utmost security.
To safeguard information and maintain compliance with data protection laws, businesses must implement critical procedures such as identifying and categorizing data, establishing regulations and guidelines, aligning with business objectives, considering company culture, prioritizing transparency and ethics, providing employee training, and creating a collaborative environment. By following these steps, businesses can ensure that their data remains secure and protected.
