Data governance refers to the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data used in an organization. Effective data governance is critical for organizations to ensure compliance with data privacy and security regulations, maintain customer trust, and avoid costly data breaches.
In today's data-driven world, where data volumes are growing exponentially and becoming increasingly complex, it is more important than ever for organizations to establish strong data governance practices in place.
Some of the critical questions that arise in the Data Governance for organizations include
- What is the location and correctness of the necessary data and the data source access?
- How does the data flow through the organization?
- What policies are associated with the data?
- What are sensitive PII data, and how to discover and secure them?
- What is the reliability of the data quality?
- Which business sections utilize this data, and what are the methods to ensure appropriate access control and security?
Managing and securing sensitive data has become a significant challenge for organizations, especially with the proliferation of data breaches and cyber threats. Ineffective data management and non-compliance with data privacy and security regulations can result in legal and financial penalties, damage to an organization's reputation, and loss of customer trust.
Moreover, the increasing complexity of data ecosystems, including cloud services and mobile devices, has made it difficult for organizations to manage data and ensure its security.
Data quality, data cataloging, and lineage
As more organizations are in the cloud adoption journey, some key challenges that come to the fore are data quality, metadata cataloging (technical and business), and data lineage. Organizations are at different levels of maturity in these aspects of governance and require a deeper look into their data landscape, especially in these hybrid environments (on-prem and Cloud).
The availability of quality data for the proper outcomes and the data catalog for self-service is essential, with no compromise for consumption and precision in delivering insights (BI, reporting, and AI/ML). When organizations have well-defined guardrails to democratize data availability, the quality of decisions aligns with the value-driven business outcomes.
Data modernization programs typically overlook data governance, leading to challenges in unlocking the actual value of data organizations manage and consume.
We bring deep expertise to ensure you have robust and holistic data governance for hybrid and multi-cloud environments across the data estate boundaries of the organization.
At Virtusa, we offer data governance solutions to help organizations enhance their data availability, security, and compliance, enabling data democratization with suitable access controls.
Our solutions include the following areas
These solutions help organizations gain a holistic view of their data landscape, identify potential security risks, and implement effective data management policies and controls.
- Data governance assessment and roadmap
- Data discovery and classification (for sensitive data)
- Data lineage and traceability
- Data quality and validation
- Data access and authorization
- Policy management
Organizations must adopt a data-centric approach that prioritizes data quality, availability, traceability, privacy, and security to implement effective data governance practices.
This includes a well-defined data governance framework and implementing robust policies and controls, conducting regular data privacy and security assessments, and establishing a culture of employee data security awareness. Additionally, organizations should invest in advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, to automate data governance processes, improve overall data security posture, and unlock the potential revenue stream with high-quality data for consumption and insights.