Here’s a question - when was the last time you received an email from a business and thought to yourself, ‘I don’t even remember signing up to that’?
These days, data is the currency of the internet - and with the pandemic-induced increased use of cloud products and services, among other technologies, the volume of data is growing exponentially. But with the growing richness of digital interactions comes questions such as where does data reside? Who has access to it? And how is it being used?
There’s no denying that data is the soul of digital transformation - and unleashing its power presents huge opportunities for businesses to grow, innovate and deliver better, more personalised offerings and conveniences to their consumers. Look no further than the ways hotels, schools, hospitals and F&B establishments pivoted in the past 18 months.
But as governments and regulators around the world increasingly scrutinise data governance and ethics, it’s vital that organisations improve their maturity around data management, access & ownership, and security & privacy. After all, complexity is no excuse for noncompliance.
So, how can companies make sure they’re staying on top of things to protect their valuable data assets while staying compliant within an ever-fluctuating regulatory landscape?
Understanding your borders
For starters, it’s important for businesses to review the markets that impact their business. An organisation that serves only Singapore will face different (and less complex) challenges than one that’s global - because it’s not so much where the business is based as where the customers are, and who’s data will end up on your books.
In the absence of unified data privacy laws - for example, APAC countries working towards their own version of GDPR - businesses therefore need to clarify data flows in and out of countries, between organisations, and who owns certain ‘assets’.
Powering governance at scale
Beyond scoping which markets’ rules apply to your business, the reality is that data privacy laws are also constantly being updated - so being adaptable and responsive to market trends and demands is key to maintaining compliance in the long-term.
As COVID-19 pushes organisations to accelerate their cloud adoption, the need to safely share growing amounts of data across enterprise cloud environments while navigating potential security threats and risks is a growing consideration for business leaders.
Put it all together and the path forward is clear - you need to operationalise and scale your data privacy strategy by implementing a reliable data governance framework that allows you to quickly respond to the changing landscape. In other words, your strategy needs to be cloud-native, and AI-powered to effectively monitor and protect data, and stay ahead of the latest privacy laws using flexible, repeatable and scalable approach.
Accelerating productivity and innovation
Perhaps contrary to popular belief, it’s important to note that data governance goes beyond privacy and data ‘inventory’. It should also support how effectively an organisation drives insights through analytics, to better understand its data.
When underpinned by metadata-driven intelligence through AI and machine learning, organisations can enable greater automation, accelerate results from data analytics at scale, and increase efficiency to generate faster insights without compromising on security.
With metadata-driven intelligence and automation across organisation, we can improve data transparency and leverage data for innovation, boosting the productivity of data stewards by enabling them to own and accurately infer new data relationships with meta knowledge graphs. This essentially means they’d be able to better identify sensitive data, and consistently apply and update data quality rules accordingly. Ultimately the end goal is to enable innovation to continue to flourish in the organisation through the use of trusted, high-quality data and operate in a business environment that allows the company to excel and succeed.
The way forward
In this digital, ‘borderless’ world, the irony is that borders have actually become more important than ever before - and ensuring a comprehensive and consistent set of parameters established for data privacy will be critical for any company looking to unlock the potential of their data. These will include prioritising considerations on data privacy governance, protection, sovereignty and residency - and having enhanced visibility across their valuable data assets will be key to success.
