The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) made its first real impact as Google’s record GDPR fine dominated news cycles.
Historically, fines had peaked at six figures with the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fines of 500,000 pounds ($650,000 USD) against both Facebook and Equifax for their data protection breaches.
Experts predicted an uptick in GDPR enforcement in 2019, and Google’s recent record GDPR fine has brought that to fruition. France’s data privacy enforcement agency hit the tech giant with a $57 million penalty – more than 80 times the steepest ICO fine.
If it can happen to Google, no organization is safe. Many in fact still lag in the GDPR compliance department. Cisco’s 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study reveals that only 59 percent of organizations are meeting “all or most” of GDPR’s requirements.
So many more GDPR violations are likely to come to light. And even organizations that are currently compliant can’t afford to let their data governance standards slip.
Data Governance for GDPR
Google’s record GDPR fine makes the rationale for better data governance clear enough. However, the Cisco report offers even more insight into the value of achieving and maintaining compliance.
Organizations with GDPR-compliant security measures are not only less likely to suffer a breach (74 percent vs. 89 percent), but the breaches suffered are less costly too, with fewer records affected.
However, applying such GDPR-compliant provisions can’t be done on a whim; organizations must expand their data governance practices to include compliance.
A robust data governance initiative provides a comprehensive picture of an organization’s systems and the units of data contained or used within them. This understanding encompasses not only the original instance of a data unit but also its lineage and how it has been handled and processed across an organization’s ecosystem.
With this information, organizations can apply the relevant degrees of security where necessary, ensuring expansive and efficient protection from external (i.e., breaches) and internal (i.e., mismanaged permissions) data security threats.
Although data security cannot be wholly guaranteed, these measures can help identify and contain breaches to minimize the fallout.
Looking at Google’s Record GDPR Fine as An Opportunity
The tertiary benefits of GDPR compliance include greater agility and innovation and better data discovery and management. So arguably, the “tertiary” benefits of data governance should take center stage.
While once exploited by such innovators as Amazon and Netflix, data optimization and governance is now on everyone’s radar.
So organization’s need another competitive differentiator.
An enterprise data governance experience (EDGE) provides just that.
THE REGULATORY RATIONALE FOR INTEGRATING DATA MANAGEMENT & DATA GOVERNANCE
This approach unifies data management and data governance, ensuring that the data landscape, policies, procedures and metrics stem from a central source of truth so data can be trusted at any point throughout its enterprise journey.
With an EDGE, the Any2 (any data from anywhere) data management philosophy applies – whether structured or unstructured, in the cloud or on premise. An organization’s data preparation (data mapping), enterprise modeling (business, enterprise and data) and data governance practices all draw from a single metadata repository.
In fact, metadata from a multitude of enterprise systems can be harvested and cataloged automatically. And with intelligent data discovery, sensitive data can be tagged and governed automatically as well – think GDPR as well as HIPAA, BCBS and CCPA.
Organizations without an EDGE can still achieve regulatory compliance, but data silos and the associated bottlenecks are unavoidable without integration and automation – not to mention longer timeframes and higher costs.
To get an “edge” on your competition, consider the erwin EDGE platform for greater control over and value from your data assets.
Data preparation/mapping is a great starting point and a key component of the software portfolio. Join us for a weekly demo.
