Data governance and cybersecurity

I WILL not write about vendor-centric capabilities on governance technology providers nor shall I expand or validate what everybody else feels they need, on their understanding of data governance or cybersecurity (based on a myriad of white papers out there). Instead, I will give my best opinion on the role of good data governance as one of the keys to an effective cybersecurity program.

First, I will give a layman’s view of what data governance is to a government institution and to the private industry sector partners. And second, I will explain it as what it is to society. To government and the private sector, data governance is a strategy to organize important data that can be accessed, made available to be used for analysis, to make decisions strategically for and from an unbiased and authentic point of view, that shall limit if not reduce completely the risk to either sector to save money and time. This allows both organizations, private and public, to address the unhampered delivery of services or goods needed by society. To society, data governance is a digital knowledge repository, which people rely on to get information from (presuming that the data on the internet is unbiased and authentic) so that they can make use of this data to better and simplify and live a productive and happy life.