All around the world today, government regulators are turning their attention to data privacy and protection. With the arrival of GDPR, CCPA, New York Privacy Act and a growing list of others, it’s clear that companies need to start rethinking their relationship with customer data—or else face stiff fines from regulators.
Going forward, companies can no longer treat customer data like they own it. Instead, you have to think of your organization as a custodian of customer data: you can use the data to enrich the user experience and create value for the company while it’s available, but you have to let it go when the customer wants it back. In many ways, it’s just like banking—except with data instead of cash.
In our latest eBook, Keeping Self-Service BI on the Right Side of the Law, we explore how adopting a “data custodian” mindset can pave the way to better data compliance and security, as well as improve the overall accuracy of data across the entire organization. Here’s a preview:
Enabling Data Compliance
In today’s post-GDPR regulatory landscape, when customers want their data removed from your systems, you have a legal obligation to make it happen. That’s next to impossible to do in an environment where everyone is copying data, as is often the case with traditional approaches to self-service BI.
How do you stay on the right side of the law without sacrificing the power of self-service BI? What’s needed is a system that prevents data copying without limiting users ability to perform the analysis they require.
Enhancing Data Security
Any company that collects and stores customer data has a legal obligation to keep it secure. If your company gets hacked and customer data is stolen because of lax security measures, then serious fines are likely to follow.
Against this backdrop, companies need to start thinking more like banks when it comes to securing their customers’ data. Once again, rampant data copying is a major risk factor. How can you guarantee the security of customer data when it can be easily copied with the click of a button by well-intentioned business users needing to perform critical analysis? You can’t.
Improving Data Accuracy
When you take the “data custodian” approach to data management, additional improvements beyond regulatory compliance emerge as well, including better data accuracy. Following this model, data can flow across the organization without being altered along the way. The more accurate—and therefore trustworthy your data is—the more data-driven your organization will become.
Download your copy of Keeping Self-Service BI on the Right Side of the Law to learn why treating data like bank deposits is the key to compliance in a post-GDPR world.