Data leader Tejasvi Addagada on the value of data governance
The emergence of business models driven by data along with the evolution of modern analytics and cloud capabilities have increased the interest in data management multifold. As a result, enterprises are breaking down data siloes, transforming their data architectures, and democratizing access to data tools to accelerate decision-making. But the journey to the data-driven enterprise remains challenging, riddled by roadblocks, from budgeting issues to buy-in difficulties. And sound data governance practices can’t be given short shrift in the rush to unlock hidden insights from data. With all that in addition to privacy and compliance laws continually evolving across the globe, the chief data officer role as become a highly challenging — and enterprise-critical — balancing act. To learn more about how data leaders are embracing the challenge, CIO.com caught up with Tejasvi Addagada, chief data officer at HDFC Bank, to discuss the various aspects of data impacting enterprises today.
Tapping the business value of data while keeping it secure is a complex balancing act. How can IT leaders convert data into dollars while ensuring its security? Addagada: A well-desired culture change of data awareness in an organization can be achieved through data democratization, a science that makes data accessible to anyone. By making data available and easily accessible, revenue streams can be improved through direct and indirect monetization of data. Data protection enables responsible data consumption on the heels of data democratization. Even though a data marketplace cannot provide free access to all data, there can be risk-based controls that must be actively managed. A few of these controls are privacy, security, authentication, encryption, entitlements, user access management, device management, and data rights management.
New Privacy laws are coming into force while existing ones are under constant review. Technology leaders must account for the laws of every geography they do business in as a breach can bring about strong penalties. How can data officers meet regulations confidently?
Addagada: Privacy policy is constantly evolving across geographies, towards providing more control for customers on their personal data yet letting companies and public authorities share what is required for efficient governance, better service, and public good. Privacy engineering as a science must cater to providing geographical awareness that is backed by technology advancements like catalog, privacy, and security analytics. Assessment of the threat surface area begins with determining the classification of personal data in a geographical area. It is crucial that the catalog has the intelligence to apply geographical rules to classify the personal data, since what constitutes personal data differs between countries. As an example, financial information may be considered sensitive personal data in India but not in Europe. Over 137 countries have legislation to protect data and privacy. The data office can formalize, as part of the overall breach incident response, the integration of privacy intelligence and thereby privacy reporting tasks that have geographical context. Further, data offices can partner with the legal teams to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
More on the interview at
https://www.cio.com/article/472817/cdo-tejasvi-addagada-on-the-value-of-data-governance.html
