Harmonizing Data Governance with Privacy Governance is Smart Governance

You can have your cake and eat it with your data asset. Fostering customer loyalty and harnessing optimal value in your data asset without compromising privacy breaches is a win-win for every organization.

As we continue to immerse ourselves into our Data-Driven world, and all excited about the innovative power of data. With so much to harness and so much inherent value packed in the insight of the data in our ecosystems.

However, our newly discovered treasure in data comes with a 'double-edge sword' of limitless value and potential abuse and misuse if the same data is exposed to the wrong hands. Our awareness of the inherent risk in data proliferation continues to grow daily. The question most organizations faced today is not if their data should be at optimal health as they know the current data world is a world of the survival of the fittest data.

In this age of pandemic, every organization and sector is fully aware of making their data work for them with the power of analytics for customer centricity and increasing the bottom line for their organization.

As we started collecting more sensitive data in biometrics for contact tracing and other PII(Personal Identifiable Information) entrusted to our data space, there are new and different challenges that call for optimizing our data security with enhanced encryption.

The regulators are beefing up their guidance around data. Monitoring data flows and engagement is our new norm, as every organization must be concerned about its data security posture.

The vulnerability of VPN exploitation as we all work virtually has increased over the year as we now have a more distributed workforce. Increase phishing threads are some of the attack threats to remote workers. With everyone working remotely, the reality of our new threats and challenges calls for smarter governance around our data than ever before.

With this new reality, It's no surprise those who have been sitting on the edge of creating a governance structure around their data for years are now coming to the realization the future is here, the future is now, and the key is 'Trusted Data'.

In our quest for insight and optimal edge in our data, one of the burning questions every organization faces today is how to exploit the data in their universe without compromising their customer trust.

This is where leveraging effective governance of your data can be of optimal value to accelerate your privacy compliance. Your Data Governance Office and Your Data Privacy Office must work in collaboration to actualize your privacy goals. A collaborative effort between the leadership of both offices( your Chief Data Officer and your Chief Privacy Officer) is a must-have for every organization on a quest to win with their data without compromising their customer loyalty.

There is no doubt the discipline of data governance and data privacy are 'conjoined twins' every organization must make to work.

Data Privacy helps define the guardrails for consumer data protections, while governance helps build needful credibility to deliver a trusted, secured, and governed data environment.

So, here are some of the burning questions most organizations are faced with today:

How do you govern your data to create a personalized experience for your customers responsibly?

How do you prevent bad actors while harnessing the value in your data?

How can you position data security in your organization as a value creator?

The answer to these questions is in building effective governance around your data environment

The following are some practical tips to actualize your privacy goals and create value in your data asset at the same time without compromising your customer loyalty:

·   Foremost, you must understand the great value in your data comes with great responsibility. You must understand your number one responsibility is to ensure optimal protection of your customer data.

·   You must position your Data Governance adoption and Privacy initiatives to work hand in hand in key decisions around your data security. i.e. deciding which technology to use to sanitize your PII data; which encryption mechanism will provide optimal protection to your customer data.

·   Understand your data exposure to de-risk your data environment to prevent your PII from getting into the hand of wrong actors internally and externally.

·   Understand what data is available to you and how you are using it, who can access what data, and what they are using it for.

·   Build effective data stewardship around your data value chain.

·   Equip and empower your Data Stewards and Data roles to be your privacy advocates. Data privacy must be engrained into your data governance activation.

·   Stop proliferation of PII information into your data lakes, warehouses, and analytic space.

In a nutshell, you can have your cake and eat it with your data asset. You can foster customer loyalty and harness the optimal value in your data for a limitless edge when you leverage Data Governance to accelerate your privacy compliance. The answer is in the smartness of your data strategy.

While Data Governance and Privacy are two separate disciplines, both require the same cultural transformation and literacy awareness to build credibility and trust around your data asset. Your CPO focuses on privacy laws and the promotion of best privacy practices in your organization. At the same time, your CDO or Data Governance Officer takes this as part of the mandate to actualize needful standards of care and stewardship around your data asset. They both work for the same common good of needful due diligence to create a fully trusted, business-ready data environment. With both offices working harmoniously together, you can liberate your organization from regulatory penalties and position your data at its best for optimal value at the same time. Thereby, creating a win-win for both your customers and your organization to continue to thrive without compromising customer loyalty and trust.

Need some help setting the tone for your data governance adoption as a catalyst to actualize your privacy mandates?

Book a (free) discovery call with me to discuss your challenges, and we can explore some simple strategies to actualize your desired goals.

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