Data security has always been a priority. Thanks to AI and machine learning’s massive boost in the past years, however, it is going to be a matter of life or death. This is because it’s not just backdoors you have to worry about, but user access.
AI is making it so easy to copy faces, voices, and spoof identities. With this alone, the chances of employees of, even bosses, getting tricked into unlocking access is higher than ever. Then add onto the dangers of existing cybersecurity threats, and you can start to see just how dire the situation is for businesses.
Master Data Governance, commonly known as MDG, is usually associated with data quality management. While improving consistency and quality is absolutely its number one benefit, there is an added side effect, and that’s the fact that MDG makes it so much easier to secure your data.
Facts Behind Data Breaches
- Today, a data breach is estimated to cost a company $4.45 million.
- 94% of polled businesses have reported a security incident, where there was at least an attack via email.
- Data breaches are becoming more frequent. In 2023, there were 72% more data breaches than in 2021.
In short, you cannot sleep on your security. Now, while there are many different ways to approach securing your system, the one you’re going to want to look at today is Master Data Governance.
How Poor Data Management Leads to Security Risks
To really understand how MDG can impact your security efforts, you first need to understand how data management leads to security leaks.
Access Control Issues
There are so many reasons why you need to limit the information that any one person has access to in your business. One, it helps employees do their job better since they have less info to sort through. Two, it minimizes the risk of in-house leaks or threats. Three, it puts a cap on what a hacker who has taken an employees’ login credentials can gain access to.
With a fully robust access control setup, there are no wayward documents. For example, someone in your marketing department won’t accidentally have access to your payroll. Also, if there is a leak, you can easily track it back to its source and fix the crack in your system’s armor.
How does MDG work in access control? It manages the data, allowing you to decide who has access to view a document, who has access to edit the document, and even who can download/add/remove a document.
Compliance Hiccups
MDG is regularly used to help improve compliance in your industry. This also applies to data privacy regulations like the GDPR or CCPA. This way, you can help better protect your customers, and, as a result, your business if there’s ever a privacy leak or issue.
If your system isn’t compliant, or you don’t fully know if all of your system is compliant, then you have cracks in your armor that could lead to fines, mass customer desertion, and more.
Incomplete Overview of Data
If your data is in multiple silos, even if those silos are cloud-based (for example, you use several cloud-based systems and store data on them), then you aren’t getting the most out of your data but, more importantly, for this topic, you are expanding the number of security risks you face.
It can be hard to make sure that your security efforts are uniform across every system, server, and software tool. Since one of the key pillars of MDG is centralizing your data, you can pool all your resources together to enhance security.
How to Use MDG to Improve Your Security Efforts
Now that you understand a bit more about how data management can lead to problems in security, it’s time to get into the thick of what MDG can do to help you secure your system:
Allows Robust User Access Control
When all your data is in one place and properly organized with an MDG system, you can easily and effectively manage user access. You can do this by giving certain employees specific access rules. Otherwise you’ll want to tie user access limits with job roles. This way, a sales manager will have access to more information than a sales associate. You can also change permissions, so only a very few people have the right to edit or delete documents.
How does this help? Let’s say that your sales associate mistakenly clicked on a malware link and had his login details. A hacker trying to use those login details will be able to only see the assets that the associate could use, and, more importantly, that hacker cannot add, edit, or delete any information.
This means that their efforts are immediately squandered. After all, ransomware, where your data is held hostage at risk of deletion, is one of the biggest threats in the cybersecurity world.
Use Data Lineage to Track Leaks
It is inevitable that you’ll experience hacking attempts. What’s important is that you learn from them. MDG makes it possible to track data lineage (tracing information back to its origin). This means that a piece of malware or other virus can be tracked back to where it came from. In most cases, you’ll find this to be a user access break-in. In that case, training said employee on cyber security measures, changing their password, and making sure they have a solid two-factor authentication system is essential.
Improved Data Quality
When you have all your information in one place you can better protect it. You can also eliminate inaccurate data, duplicates, and incomplete datasets. This is great for analytics, but it also plays a role in cybersecurity. For example, having consistent customer and employee information can mean your system can reliably send out two-factor authentication to the right person.
Increased Encryption
With all your data organized and sorted with an MDG framework, you can then work on establishing security measures system-wide. One of the most important of these is encryption, which can and should be implemented for data in transit and storage for the best results.