FEATURE : DATA MANAGEMENT

Effective data management is essential for businesses navigating growing data volumes , evolving regulations and cybersecurity risks . Striking the right balance between scalability , security and compliance is key to maintaining efficiency and resilience in a data-driven world . We asked three industry experts how businesses can balance scalability and security when managing large volumes of data in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape . may appear more attractive to keep everything locked down , as the saying goes , it ’ s better to be safe than sorry . Prioritising a system ’ s security comes first .

Companies can learn from the banking industry and how they approach non-financial risks – such as data privacy or IT platform risk . In their world , risk is quantifiable . You can translate this idea to other sectors : the strategy around data management should come down to what constitutes an acceptable risk for your organisation .

Top global banks have widely adopted solutions that automatically apply security guardrails to data . In a well-designed system all data coming in is protected , so that it resides on the server or on the database in an encrypted form , that no one in the organisation or an outside attacker can decipher .

Balancing the security and usability of data is indeed a balancing act and it ’ s a challenge to get it right . Too stringent controls often translate to locking down information sources and platforms . In companies that subscribe to this approach any access to data is governed by a multi-step approval process . If we believe that data is the new gold , this can stifle or even kill any innovation . In fact , security concerns are one of the top reasons why companies are reluctant to adopt cloud technologies and modernise .

Recently , we have seen that approach in action as everyone in the corporate world rushed to block access to Copilots and AI chats on employees ’ computers . On the other end of the spectrum , lenient governance and underdeveloped controls are the two main ingredients of data breaches .

The data is only re-identified for authorised users when needed : within their Business Intelligence reports or customer applications . That ’ s the core of data-centric security , something that we at Protegrity have been building and perfecting over decades . AI has been a great motor for enhancing this capability : it ’ s now possible to automatically detect if any given data is sensitive and protect it accordingly .

It ’ s AI at its best , enhancing existing processes by improving their quality – AI models get better over time – and reducing cost and effort by automating manual tasks . Together , this approach builds a strong control framework over the most sensitive data resources and provides a programmatic answer to the security verses usability conversation .

Andrew McMillan , Partner and corporate lawyer specialising in M & A and data governance within the Technology , Media and Telecommunications ( TMT ) sector , at RPC

Iwona Rajca , Senior Solution Engineer EMEA at Protegrity

Operating in a complex regulatory landscape adds another dimension to this dilemma . To avoid fines , it

Recent studies suggest that up to 90 % of the world ’ s data was generated in the last two years . And

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