Data Governance Based on Roles and Responsibilities is Key to Avoiding Regulatory Risk

by Jonathan Sander

Data governance is critical to managing the availability,integrity and security of all data across the enterprise. Every organizationmust comply with today’s copious amounts of external regulations for handlingdata, and data governance is the discipline that helps the enterprise remaincompliant and avoid regulatory risk. A data governance plan defines who is accountable for your unstructureddata held in files, folders and shares across NTFS, NAS devices andSharePoint. It also establishes aset of controls and audit procedures that ensure compliance is continuous.

Along withestablishing who is accountable for the data, a data governance plan definesthe level of access for each of those data stewards. Ideally, this should bebased on each employee’s role and responsibilities, and determined by thebusiness stakeholders who have insight into who should have access to differentsensitive data, and what kind of risk is posed by that access. The criticalneed to maintain regulatory compliance has changed the landscape for businessestoday. In the past, business needed IT to perform a task, and, as long as thetask was executed, nobody really cared howit was done. With today’s transparency and interconnectedness, businesses want governance and oversight to avoidpotentially costly compliance breaches.

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