How to secure your Data Capital: 6 crucial aspects
Data is the new gold. As a result, Data Capital has become a crucial resource for any data-driven organization. It can help you achieve a range of benefits in terms of insights, innovation, and competitive positioning. In this blog post, we will explore the six crucial aspects of geting the most out of your Data Capital.
In a company started this year, data is likely to play a crucial role not just in one department, but across the organization as a driving force for decision-making. It is important to understand how to protect and optimize your Data Capital. Just like a safe that protects your most valuable possessions, your data, databases, or data platform should be secured against threats and ready to deliver value at any time. Let's dive into the six key aspects that can help you get the most out of your Data Capital.
1. Cost-efficiency: How can your data contribute to optimizing cost?
By being data-driven, you can make informed decisions that reduce waste and optimize resource utilization. Imagine how precise data on customer behavior can help you tailor your products and services, reducing the costs of overproduction. Data can also help optimize processes by identifying bottlenecks and constraints.
2. Security: How do you protect yourself against advanced cyber threats?
Robust data management strategies can help prevent unauthorized access and protect you from data loss. For example, data analysis can be used to identify and respond to security threats in real time, minimizing potential damage. It is important to have a proactive approach to cyber security so that you can be ahead of the game before any damage occurs. This can include regular security audits, implementation of strong access control protocols, and creating a robust Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).
3. Availability: How long can your business survive without access to data?
If you lose access to your data, you can no longer benefit from it. Therefore, it is important to implement High Availability principles, such as redundant systems, as well as a robust backup strategy. But a backup is not worth much if it cannot be restored. Any IT department knows that regular restore testing is important, unfortunately, it is often deprioritized. The reasons can be busy schedules or simply that it is cumbersome to perform in practice.
4. Scalability: Has your business turned up the scalability too high?
As data volumes grow, it is crucial that your systems and processes can handle growth effectively. With a scalability plan, you can ensure that your data infrastructure can adapt to accommodate increasing data volumes while maintaining performance and reliability. Cloud-based solutions are an effective way to achieve scalability as they allow you to easily scale up or down as needed. However, even in the cloud, we see that customers have turned up scalability where it is not needed. This can have a big impact on the IT budget, so it is important to manage when to turn it up and down.
Outside of the cloud, it is typical to build the solution to also cover future peaks for seasons and events with increased vulnerability and therefore pay for it year-round, despite only using it for days like Black Friday, or Christmas.
5. Manageability: How do you effectively organize increasing data volumes?
With increasing data volumes, it can be a challenge to keep track of your data. Effective data management strategies, such as the use of data catalogs and automated processes, can help organize and categorize your data. To improve the manageability of your data, you can also implement data governance policies. This can help ensure that your data is always accurate, consistent, reliable, and compliant with relevant regulatory requirements and standards.
6. Performance: Is your business compromising due to performance?
To effectively leverage your Data Capital, your IT setup must have good performance. This includes the speed of data collection, processing, and analysis, as well as the ability to handle large amounts of data without compromising performance. You can improve performance by implementing data caching techniques and efficient database indexing. This can ensure that your data is available and can be analyzed quickly and efficiently. It is not unlikely to achieve a performance improvement of more than 20%.
Get the most out of your data
Securing your Data Capital is a complex task that requires a strategic focus. But with the right team and tools, you can ensure that your Data Capital is secure, accessible, and capable of delivering the value you need. At Cegal, our team of database experts is dedicated to helping you secure your Data Capital and leverage its full potential. We have supported a wide range of our customers in optimizing and securing their IT setups, so that they can always get the most out of their data.
