What Is Data Access Governance?

Many enterprises store staggering amounts of confidential information, from classified government contracts to personally identifiable consumer information. Even small and medium businesses handle sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, backing details, employee records, and trade secrets. To keep this treasure trove of information safe, your organization needs a data access governance program. The first step is learning what data access governance is and does.

What Is Data Access Governance and What Does It Involve?

Data access governance is a framework that guides your organization’s collection, use, storage, and protection of data. These policies, procedures, and guidelines help you control access to your company’s data and follow information security best practices.

Data access governance policies outline:

• Which employees are authorized to access company data
• Who is responsible for monitoring and safeguarding data
• What types of data each user can access
• How the data should be accessed
• When and where data can be accessed
• What uses of the data are allowed (e.g., updating, downloading, copying, etc.)

The primary purpose of implementing a data governance framework is to keep sensitive information secure. Robust policies can prevent accidental or deliberate exposure of confidential organizational data.

Important Elements of Data Access Governance

The specific policies you need to include in your data access governance framework depend on your organization’s operations, industry, and business model. That said, frameworks generally include five important principles:

1.  Visibility: You can’t protect data if you don’t know it exists, so a robust infosec program starts by identifying all of your organization’s sensitive data — old and new.
2. Classification: Some types of data are more sensitive than others, requiring additional layers of security and stricter access controls.
3. Accountability: Stakeholders should clearly understand who is responsible for collecting, storing, reviewing, and safeguarding each type of confidential data. This reduces the risk of unsecured copies floating around.
4. Accuracy/integrity:Data access governance also requires maintaining up-to-date versions of records to avoid errors. Modern businesses often centralize storage to eliminate data silos.
5. Segmentation:Locking data into password/MFA-protected segments is vital for successful data access control. Segmentation policies allow you to prevent unauthorized access by low-level employees.

Some organizations add a sixth pillar: compliance. HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2, CMMC, and other data protection standards have regulations that cover storage, data loss prevention, audit trails, access control, and other infosec topics. If you follow a GRC framework, you should include compliance considerations in every aspect of data management.

Is Data Access Governance the Same as Data Management?

Although data access governance and data management policies both involve important information, they have very different purposes. Data management is a broader category that involves organizing company information and streamlining data sharing between teams.

Data access governance does involve making data available to the right people, but it’s more closely related to data security. Policies focus more on restricting access to information assets than sharing them. 

Why Is Data Governance Important?

Tailoring a data access governance framework for your business requires time and resources, but the results are worth the effort.

Regulatory Compliance

Following effective data access policies helps your business comply with leading cybersecurity guidelines, industry best practices, legal requirements, and government regulations. Some examples include:

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• General Data Protection Regulation
• California Consumer Privacy Act
• Payment Card Industry Digital Security Standards
• ISO/IEC 27001 certification

For example, PCI DSS Requirement 7 requires strict access control measures. Only individuals who need to see cardholder data for processing purposes should have access, and only temporarily.

Cybersecurity

The vast majority of data breaches involve human errors (nearly 70%), from phishing attempts and stolen passwords to configuration mistakes and infected files. By restricting access to sensitive information to just a few people, your organization can significantly reduce its attack surface. Instead of worrying about hundreds of employees accidentally opening the door to hackers, you make sure only trustworthy, high-level professionals can interact with the data.

Brand Reputation

Massive data breaches can have a tremendous impact on consumer confidence in brands, from financial services to automakers. Failing to protect sensitive data tells consumers that a company isn’t trustworthy. Leaks also hurt your relationship with business customers, putting the reputation of your products and services in doubt.

How Can Your Organization Follow Data Access Governance Best Practices?

Effective data access governance isn’t set in stone. As your organization grows, regulations shift, or cyber threats target different vectors, your access control policies and data safeguards need to keep up.

Continuous Monitoring

If your IT budget allows for it, network monitoring is one of the best ways to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. Monitoring solutions can flag suspicious traffic, failed login attempts, and mismatched devices/user IDs. The goal is to prevent a data breach or at least prevent the exposure of high-risk data.

Regular Audits

Configure your system to generate logs of all sign-ins and user activity. These records should identify the user who logged in, show what information the person accessed, and reveal any modifications, downloads, or deletions.

With data in hand, your team can conduct internal audits to look for intentional violations, errors, or potentially dangerous actions. No data access policy is perfect, but audits give you the chance to continually improve your defenses.

Data Governance Tools

As the scale of data your organization handles grows, it becomes harder for a single person to manage access dependably. Fortunately, technology can handle much of the heavy lifting without compromising your security.

Data access governance tools and compliance platforms allow for advanced workflow automation, network monitoring, and logging. You can create rules for log generation, automatic notifications, session timeouts, and lockdowns.

What Does Data Access Governance Mean for Your Business? 

Improving data access governance means thinking in terms of solutions. Focus on addressing the challenges and risks your organization faces with its current system. Then, build a framework that eliminates silos, fosters accountability, improves visibility, and reduces attack surfaces.

Data access governance is essential for enterprises. Discover how Compyl can help you customize your program at every stage, from strategy to ongoing compliance.