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    Embracing Flexible Data Governance

    Going forward, organizations that devise a well-thought-out strategy for data management and adopt technologies that tie together well are the most likely to succeed in unlocking their data’s value.

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    Data is only as good as its governance strategy. With organizations generating more & more data, there is an increasing need to improve data accessibility and derive more value from it. As a result, data governance issues – around how organizations manage, use, and share data across the value chain has gained increasing prominence, probably more so than ever.

    According to a recent Gartner report, it’s expected that by 2022 as many as 90% of corporate strategies will recognize their data as a critical business asset, making governance in the digital age a necessary event for all governance professionals.

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    The Growing Significance of Data Governance

    Data is and has always been the lifeline of whatever we do. It has become even more critical now in the age of digitization. “Organizations need the right tools to unlock the purpose of collecting the data and making a good use of it to take the customer from product A to product B.” Jai Pawani, COO, HSBC India.

    Data governance encompasses the people, processes, and information technology required to create a consistent and proper handling of an organization’s data across the business enterprise. “Effective data governance is fundamental for maintaining good data quality, accurate and timely regulatory and management reporting and exploiting the value of data for competitive advantage,” said Lalit Kalra, Partner Cybersecurity EY.

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    Key Issues and Challenges

    Most companies in India are still in the process of developing their data governance systems as inflexible legacy data systems, siloed and disorganized data make data governance challenging.

    Poor data quality is another major hurdle organizations are facing. “Data cleansing is tougher for companies in insurance as we are in the business of long-term relationships which means we house the data for a very long term and require relevant data as the customer goes through different life stages,” said Suhail Ghai, EVP & CTO, Max Life Insurance.

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    Atanu Roy, Group Chief Information Officer, Biocon Ltd states that data integrity is fundamental for pharma companies to build trust between regulatory agencies and the industry as a whole. “Equally important is maintaining data privacy. We may have data regarding a patient being diagnosed diabetes or cancer but that information shouldn’t be used by other channels to pitch related sales,” he said.

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    Cyber Security

    Kashinath Mahapatra CIO Enterprise GMR Group explained that data is an asset as well as a liability because if it is not protected well the onus falls on the company. “This is the reason why data life cycle management is emerging as a different vertical now at various organizations,” he said.

    Balaji Rao, Managing Director- India, Africa & SAARC, Veritas revealed that in a survey conducted last year, 72% respondents agreed that they were not adequately protected against ransomware attacks. “It takes a minimum of 4-5 days and up to 16 days for an organization to recover from such an attack. No business can afford to lose that kind of time. Yet cybersecurity measures have not kept pace with how fast digitization is happening for most companies,” he explained.

    Data destruction – that is elimination, erasure or clearing of digital content – might become a mandate soon once the IDPR bill comes in effect. The bill covers everything from duration for which a company can hold data to data protection authority. “From impact perspective, the bill is great for customers as it makes it very transparent and ensures adequate governance around it. It is also good from industry perspective as it will bring consistency in interpreting these laws,” said Pawani.

    However, before the law comes in effect, organizations need to check their preparedness for it. “Once the bill comes out, the customer will have the right to withdraw data. Businesses across industries might not be prepared for that as that would mean that the company needs to withdraw data from every platform,” voiced Ghai.

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    Way Forward

    “When formulating new business strategy, companies must keep in mind the 4cs: cost, cyber security, cloud, and compliance. Consider the cost of storing and managing the data as the volumes go up. Take adequate measures for cyber security. Standardize management policies to leverage scalable private cloud and multiple public cloud providers. And, of course, be compliant across disparate systems, clouds and infrastructures, and geographies,” summed up Rao.

    This article has been written by Purva Bhatia from Times Group.

    Send feedback to etgreycell@timesgroup.com

    Disclaimer: Content Produced by Veritas


    Disclaimer: Content Produced by Veritas

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