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Data governance involves safeguarding your organization’s information, making it available to the right people, and using it to improve your operations. Accomplishing these goals takes effort, from employee training to data loss prevention tools. Is the investment worth it? Discover why data governance is important for healthcare, finance, retail, manufacturing, and other industries.
If your business is like most, you keep careful records of tangible assets — inventory, raw materials, equipment, real estate, capital, and personnel. Shouldn’t you do the same with your organization’s data? Information is one of your most valuable business assets, but without a data governance framework, making use of it becomes expensive and difficult.
Medium and large enterprises today have so many roles and departments that traditional data management is an obstacle instead of a solution. Poor data sharing practices lead to silos, walled off information “islands” inside each department. According to Entrepreneuer, the average business has approximately 2,000 data silos. This means duplicated work, misunderstandings, and each part of your organization essentially doing its own thing — not exactly a recipe for success or efficiency.
Cyberattacks put your company’s most sensitive information at risk. In 2023 and 2024, more than 55% of U.S. businesses experienced a ransomware attack or lost critical data.
One of the reasons data breaches hit so hard is that today’s companies have trouble figuring out what was taken. For most businesses, it takes more than nine months to successfully identify a breach and contain it.
How can data governance help? By mapping your company’s data, categorizing it by sensitivity, and implementing access control measures, you limit the impact of intrusions and keep your most important data in the most secure locations.
In an organization with hundreds or thousands of employees, keeping tabs on how individual teams are gathering and using data isn’t easy. This can quickly lead to compliance violations or cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
State-of-the-art data governance tools consolidate records and make them readily available to the right people. You can limit access to sensitive data for new hires but give department heads the information they need to coordinate work activities smoothly.
Data security and privacy regulations are the new normal for today’s businesses:
All of these compliance frameworks require businesses to have the key elements of data governance in place, such as data assessments, access control measures, privacy policies, acceptable use policies, and backup tools.
Smart data management policies can help your business avoid communications problems and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, but those aren’t the only reasons to follow through. Above all, a data governance framework creates a solid foundation for your company’s future growth. Data governance benefits can completely transform your operations — both online and offline.
Complying with government regulations, industry guidelines, and financial audits usually requires a massive quantity of records. For example, preparing for a SOC 2 Type 2 data security assessment usually means gathering compliance reports from your entire organization for six months or more.
Attempting such a large undertaking would normally be a record-keeping nightmare of epic proportions, but good data governance practices make things much simpler. Centralized policies outline what reports you need, who is responsible for them, where they should be stored, and how you secure them. When you add a high-tech compliance platform like Compyl, you can even automate the document workflow.
Data retention policies also help with records requests for HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA compliance. HIPAA says that you have to make medical records available to patients on request (within 30 days). A data governance system organizes all bills, test results, prescriptions, telehealth records, and patient information in the same place.
Data silos lead to redundancy because teams have to resolve problems independently. On the other hand, centralized communications provide a unified direction for your organization to follow. Employees can quickly find the required processes, procedures, files, and resources needed for work tasks, reducing downtime and mistakes.
These data governance benefits mean that departments spend less time analyzing and more time being productive. This speeds up your production rates and increases overall revenue.
One cloud security company found that nearly 100% of its clients had given employees excessive access privileges to sensitive data. A data governance program helps you avoid this type of “breach waiting to happen” by following a zero-trust approach for access management. Limiting user access to resources is a great defense against insider threats and malware.
Today’s consumers want to know how you’re using, storing, and protecting their personal data. Part of data governance includes creating customer-facing policies for data processing, marketing, and retention.
Adopting transparent and consumer-friendly data usage policies can help your organization make a positive impression on customers. The opposite approach — deceptive data practices — often leads to scandals, consumer backlash, legal problems, and brand damage.
That’s what happened when customers learned that automaker GM was selling their driving data to insurance companies without informed consent. On the other hand, one of the reasons Apple has such a loyal following is that it makes customer privacy a priority.
Another valuable aspect of data governance is that it helps you leverage your company’s data effectively. Over the years, your company has gathered extensive data from marketing campaigns, customer purchase records, website browsing details, manufacturing statistics, and many other areas of your business.
By transforming those distinct records into a searchable matrix, your company can improve the quality of risk assessments, understand customer needs better, adapt better to market trends, and make smarter investments.
Now that you’ve had an introduction to why data governance is important, you can see how a customized data framework can deliver many benefits for your operations and regulatory needs. Learn more about data governance best practices and Compyl’s cutting-edge compliance tools today.
