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One of the first steps organizations take when preparing to deliver a data governance program is to determine where data governance should be placed in the organization. Or in other words, who should own data governance? Kathy Rondon, Chief Business Strategist, R2C, makes a compelling case around who’s responsible for data governance: everyone.
She explained that data will go through stages throughout its lifecycle, starting with Planning, Acquisition/Creation through to Share/Use, and Archive/Dispose. Various roles will touch, modify, and utilize data at each point. The Chief Data Officer (CDO) might be responsible for the overall data lifecycle. At the same time, the Data Owner is responsible for the data produced in their business unit. At the same time, Data Stewards and Data Users might get the most benefit from the information to make their jobs more effective and efficient.
Caring for Data Like Your Child
Kathy explained that you can think of this as caring for your child. At various points in a child’s life, there are different caretakers: parents, babysitters, schools, and friends. And each environment might require different protection: a babysitter may need to make sure the child is buckled in for a car ride, and friends may need to watch out for cars when playing outside. Most children don’t have a security guard following them around 24 hours a day, ensuring they’re always safe.
Data governance is the same: it’s not one person’s job; it’s everyone’s. But unfortunately, that can sometimes mean it’s no one’s. Because it doesn’t live with one specific role, data governance can end up as an “orphan,” like a child whose babysitter thinks the parent is picking them up from school that day and parents who feel the babysitter is handling it.
Secure Your Slice of the Data Lifecycle
This is similar to something we’ve talked about for a while: Whose Job Is Data Security, Anyway? Like Doug said in his blog, “When responsibility is distributed across various functions, you can end up with an ambiguous, inefficient mess — and serious security gaps.”
To ensure a child is safe, safety needs to be accessible and achievable for everyone responsible: a seatbelt needs to be easily buckled, and all the kids need to look out for cars when playing in the street. Each role must be able to deal with the risks that crop up in their stage.
When it comes to using data security to enforce data governance policies, we need easy tools for everyone to use, buy, spin up, or manage. That’s the point of ALTR’s platform: we simplify data security for everyone in the data lifecycle.
With a SaaS-based, no-code, automated solution, whether you’re a CDO or a Data User, you can purchase and use data security for the section of the data you’re responsible for. You can get what you need to fit your role’s security needs and the outcomes required by your function: Data Owners might care about the analytics and the reporting, while the Data Stewards may need to ensure that the actual policies and locks are correct.
Data Security for Everyone
When it’s nobody’s job, securing your slice of the data must be easy. It can’t be cumbersome, it can’t be expensive, and it can’t be slow. Data security has to be as easy as putting on a seat belt.