Why Ethical Data Management and Its Legitimate Governance Is Need of The Hour?

In this era of the data revolution, data is being traded as a fuel of the future. Around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated on a daily basis. Such a volume of data also gives rise to a certain level of misuse of it. The secure and dangerous life of data has created a lot of debate in the market regarding its management and governance where most of the organization consider too much regulation as a threat to their business. This also raises the concern of ethical handling of an organization's data.

The core of every organization is that it's a people business where they need to earn customers' trust and this makes ethical data handling even more significant. The trust they would gain can confirm their success in the long run and any case of unethical behavior can create a barrier in their successful future.

In order to maintain the trust bond with customers, organizations need to go above data security and privacy assurance. The data safety assurance will determine the ethical handling of users' data within or outside the company.

And here is when data governance comes into the picture because crystal clear principles and well-communicated practices can guide honest and apt behaviors to gain trust.

Notably, before starting off with the data governance, organizations need to identify regulations and framework which are well related and relevant to their style of business. The government designed framework or public sector rules both can be beneficial for data governance programs. These frameworks lay the guidelines on the forefront, on understanding the impacts of technology, data, and their ethical and real-world consequences.

Amid all these, one important aspect of an organization is the team which sometimes behaves like the blind spot and turns out to be the weakest link in there. The team within an organization need to understand the risks and security appetite of it. An enterprise can conduct various training and awareness programs for their teams to grab the perimeters of data safety.

It has been observed that consumers are entrusting their data in a place equipped with regulations. The industry is experiencing a flood of rules and regulations because of its demands from the consumer's end.

These regulations distribute more power to the consumer regarding their data privacy by charging hefty fines if organizations violate the rules.

India is also pacing fast towards setting up tech-framework and expected to release law for comprehensive data protection soon.

The law will regulate the managing of customers' personal data by the government and private firms set up in India and abroad. However, generally, data privacy laws have 2 aspects in common – one is Data Protection and other is Breach Notification. If either of these gets violated it would lead to punitive action. This would compel organizations to embrace transparency in their consumer data journey.

Data governance regulations driven by ethics can promote efficient knowledge of data, protection laws and correct use of new age technology to generate, process and analyze data.