Protecting Your Data Powerhouse from Top to Bottom
A sound data governance strategy starts with Google Cloud
An important part of working with data is guardianship — the governance necessary to drive compliance to ethics, privacy, and security regulations. As these types of regulations tend to evolve rapidly and vary according to industry, geography, and federal and local government jurisdictions, it’s important for organizations to make guardianship a priority in any data initiative.
With all of its intricacies and the risks involved if it’s not handled properly, data guardianship can be intimidating. In fact, a recent survey found that the top two barriers to becoming more data-driven were data security and data privacy concerns. While a fair amount of effort will be needed to make sure you comply with privacy laws and that your data is secure, these factors shouldn’t prevent your organization from becoming data-driven.
In order to protect your data, you need both a secure platform with strong security and privacy controls and a culture that respects the appropriate use of data.
When asked what IT decision makers needed most from their future or current cloud providers, leading the list is security expertise (41%).
Google Cloud — the foundation for sound data governance
An ideal platform should be flexible and future proof, suited for hybrid and multi-cloud environments to support your infrastructure today and in the future. When your data powerhouse is built on Google Cloud, you get a foundation that will protect your data and adapt to your changing needs. A managed global infrastructure provides always-on access, and transparency and trust principles provide confidence that your data will not be misused.
But secure infrastructure is just part of the solution. Solid processes and built-in data governance ensure data isn’t abused by those with access. The combination of Google Cloud and Google Dataplex help keep your data compliant with regulations while also providing centralized security and governance through policy management, monitoring, and auditing across your data estate.
Your data governance culture
Keeping your data safe also requires transparency into and control over how data is gathered, stored, processed, and disposed of. Data governance policies can help you comply with government and industry regulations, maintain customer and supplier trust, and manage risk. These policies can also tie in with identity access management (IAM) to ensure people within your organization have role-based access to the right data to help them do their jobs without adding risk. IAM also keeps out unauthorized users with granular, context-aware access and a built-in audit trail.
Encryption of data at rest and in transit plus cloud data loss prevention protect your sensitive data and reduce the risk of a data leak. Discover and classify sensitive data automatically to know what you have and what must be protected. You can also remove direct identifiers from sensitive data through redaction, masking, date shifting, and more to reduce the risk of sensitive data being exposed.
And finally, while your data governance policies control who can access what data, proper user accountability and responsibility are also required. People within your organization need training to understand what they can and cannot do with that data in order to comply with data privacy regulations. With the right tools and training in place, data can be used responsibly to provide valuable insights and innovation that promote agility and greater adaptability in our ever-changing world.
To learn how Slalom and Google Cloud can help you build and secure your data powerhouse, download our eBook.
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