By Kim Kaluba
Managing and governing data risk is a never-ending process for most organizations, and undiscovered, unprotected data is the riskiest. Chances are your organization is well aware of the need to manage risk, protect sensitive data, and adhere to compliance requirements, especially around citizen data or other personally identifiable information (PII) data. Now, you need to determine the best solution to meet these data risk requirements.
Our customers and prospects often tell us things like: “We’ve got data all over the place, and no one knows where it is. We must plug gaps in data privacy and compliance around personal data for our customers, suppliers, and employees. We really can’t trust our data for compliance or decision making.”
Digital transformation makes the process more complex because it heightens the data management challenge. Data volumes, variety, and velocity continue to increase at breakneck speed. Rolling out new cloud applications or sensor-based Internet of Things (IoT) devices means managing more data silos, different data types, and expansive data sets. IT complexity increases as new cloud apps must co-exist with legacy on-premises systems resulting in a hybrid IT environment. And you may be operating in a multicloud landscape using a variety of public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, along with private cloud platforms.
How can you safeguard PII to ensure compliance with data protection regulations in an ever-changing IT and business landscape?
Build a Holistic Data Governance Framework
On paper, the solution appears straightforward. To get value out of data, you need to remove the risk factors. Minimizing data risk involves technology, processes, and people — IT professionals and business users — working together under a holistic data governance framework.
This framework may be easy to conceptualize, but for many organizations, execution has proven problematic. Too often, data privacy and governance initiatives are isolated to a single business unit. IT teams may use various tools for data quality or master data management that are inconsistent across the enterprise. After initial momentum, many efforts are curtailed or abandoned. As a result, many organizations are falling short of their objectives in the critical areas of data risk management and data governance.
Hitting the Target
In the context of data privacy and compliance, a data governance framework and the right technology can help organizations achieve the critical objectives of:
- Discovering all the customer, supplier, and employee data they have.
- Preparing that data for collection by ensuring that data formats are correct and the data is complete.
- Cataloging data to provide an up-to-date, comprehensive understanding of the data and where it is located.
- Rationalizing data, keeping only what is necessary, and deleting or archiving what is redundant or obsolete.
- Delivering data securely to any customer who requests it.
- Proactively masking or anonymizing sensitive data to prevent viewing by unauthorized users.
A good data governance strategy also controls “shadow IT,” where business users roll out their own applications or use spreadsheets outside the purview of IT.
Ultimately, data governance success depends on collaboration among IT and business users. Data stewards should be assigned to “own” control of PII. It’s crucial for organizations to define data standards, roles, communications, processes, and metrics. Pairing a Chief Data Officer (CDO) with a data governance center of excellence is a good way to coordinate activities across diverse stakeholders.
Why Boomi?
Boomi Master Data Hub mitigates risk and prompts governance with powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and fully configurable capabilities. It’s engineered to restrict access to sensitive data through role-based permissions, mask and tag data, and support auditability and regulatory reporting through three key capabilities.
Data Discovery
Boomi interrogates and automatically identifies sensitive data in common data sources such as Salesforce or ServiceNow — but more importantly, also in legacy on-premises systems such as relational databases, file systems, old and current Excel spreadsheets, and backup or deprovisioned systems.
Access Restrictions
Boomi can automatically apply restrictions on data to prevent access by unauthorized individuals. Once data is discovered, administrators of Boomi Master Data Hub (often data stewards) can configure rules to govern data access by roles, groups, or named individuals. Boomi’s flexibility makes it quick and easy to implement access restrictions as new applications are brought on board.
Auditability and Regulatory Reporting
Boomi Master Data Hub strengthens auditability with golden records – sharing the same accurate data in every software tool and reporting dashboard connected to Boomi. Ensure data is always accurate, up-to-date, and audit-ready.
In summary, Boomi provides a reliable and trusted platform to de-risk your data environment and meet regulatory requirements related to PII data.
To learn more, read our brief Trust or Bust: Why Trusted Master Data Is Vital To Your Business