by Angela Guess
A new article warns businesses not to gamble their reputation on data governance: “Over the last two decades, the primary contribution of information technologies in firms has been about efficiency and enablement: to improve processes, make people more productive, reduce time to market, or enable things that couldn’t be done previously. The focus has been on costs and payoffs. This decade is witnessing a new challenge: data. There is suddenly too much of it, and while firms rush to mine it, they do so without adequate regard for the risks in keeping and using it.”
It continues, “Hardly a week goes by without yet another major breach or scandal involving data. The last month has been particularly bad… Are these incidents any different in terms of potential impacts on franchises from product recalls due to defects in industrial products? Not really. And perhaps some companies are beginning to realize this. Indeed, one major positive development from the Sony fallout has been the creation by the company of a ‘Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)’. This is a laudable step that others should follow. But it doesn’t go far enough in acknowledging the real problem.”
The article goes on, “Sony and many other firms view the security and use of data as a technical problem. But in fact, the governance of data is a management problem. The lapses we are seeing are not technical ones, but failures in management. Where data is the lifeblood of commercial activity, its management in many industries must reside in the C-suite, not in the trenches.”
photo credit: visuallight
