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In today’s digital economy, data is the fuel that powers the modern enterprise. Data lies at the center of the vast collaborative network that drives commerce and monetization, as well as communication and business growth.

As the world has increasingly shifted online—and a remote-first workforce has rapidly accelerated that shift—the growth of data has virtually (so to speak) exploded. We work online, maintain relationships online, unwind online and many of us even sleep online. Governing, securing, maintaining and even knowing all of that data has become a momentous task given outdated, manual strategies that many enterprises still maintain. Even the growing momentum behind a new regulatory landscape can't keep pace with the data that's created and collected, shared and processed, leveraged and forgotten every hour of every day.

As the data that pours into the digital ether grows, the importance of managing it increases. The faster we work to manage data, the more effectively we can not only harness it but successfully use it to develop better AI, drive more informed business intelligence and accelerate digital transformation.

The Regulatory Landscape

We’ve all heard that data is the new oil. Unlike oil, however, data is personal. It can describe recipes and patents. It can be privileged or top secret. It can be restricted from transfer or sale. In the spirit of protecting this data—and the privacy of the individuals connected to it—a growing regulatory landscape has emerged.

In the past few years, the number of regulations covering digital data has exploded beyond just PCI and HIPAA. Newer laws like GDPR, CCPA and GLBA—plus restrictions on cross-border data transfers—have taken center stage, transforming the way companies incorporate regulatory compliance into their daily operations.

Migrating Data To The Cloud

Storing, maintaining and protecting data from bad actors doesn't come cheap—and when migrating to cloud environments, organizations need to take particular care to secure data and maintain privacy compliance. In cloud migration initiatives, enterprises must know what data is going where, what data is being left behind and what data gets staged for remediation or deletion—and why.

Get More Value From Your Data

Data is the currency of digital commerce, and modern business depends on effective and accurate business intelligence, analytics, AI and data commercialization. This requires data trust—confidence in the accuracy and quality of all data across the organization.

Enterprises must know how to get the right data to the right person for the right purpose. To do this, they need an accurate picture of what data is where, as well as what data is valuable and what data isn't. The necessary level of visibility can be achieved through an effective and continuously updated inventory of your most essential data assets.

Deeper data intelligence enables you to unlock more value from your data with advanced data discovery. Advanced discovery enables businesses to look across all their data, whether in the data center or the cloud, from structured, unstructured or semi-structured sources and, finally, in motion or at rest. By discovering and classifying all their data, organizations can search not only by metadata but also by sensitivity and risk. They can get an integrated view of data quality that leads to confidence and data trust. And they can enact and operationalize a data-up control and governance framework.

Reduce Risk

Unlike oil, data isn't made up of the same "stuff," so it isn't interchangeable and can't always be treated the same way. One person’s data isn't the same as another person’s data—and a single person’s health data isn't the same as that same person’s financial data.

To minimize risk, organizations must first determine it—for all kinds of data across the enterprise. They must classify data by type and sensitivity to measure its risk and enable acting on it, whether that means setting it up for remediation, deletion, encryption or archiving.

Companies also need to look at who has access to what data. When it comes to sensitive or confidential data, businesses must consider if the people accessing it have the right privileges—or if that access violates data sovereignty or transfer prohibitions.

Knowing all your data is necessary for minimizing risk for your organization—but you can’t protect what you can’t find. Accurately identifying data, classifying it by type, restricting its access to privileged users only and enacting remediation workflows that will keep the attack surface as small as possible helps organizations mitigate risk—and all of this starts with deeper discovery.

Preserve Privacy

Since GDPR, privacy laws in over 120 countries worldwide have either been adopted or are in some phase of development. Although the exact letter of each of these laws varies, they all include limitations around how organizations collect, process, share and store data—and for how long. These requirements also bring new obligations around data rights, preference capture for cookies and the selling and sharing of data. In the world of data privacy, you not only need to know what you have but also who it belongs to.

Data Powers The New Digital Enterprise

Discovering and knowing your data is particularly relevant when it comes to the cloud, where data can encompass multiple data centers and locations. With more and more enterprises initiating digital transformation efforts and migrating to the cloud, organizations face greater pressure to identify their high-value data while reducing data risk.

To enable this shift—and accommodate the mounting privacy and protection requirements spreading across the globe—companies must adjust their approach to compliance, security and governance. This begins with knowing your data, and it can start with intelligent data discovery.

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