What is IT Governance? How Does it Help in Data Protection?

As a customer, do you trust companies to protect your data? From the 2023 trust survey, 87% of business executives claim their customers highly trust them; however, only 27% of customers agree.

Why is there a huge gap? What sector of business lacks to ensure customers of securing their data? It is the IT service of an organization that is insufficient to assure customers, which manages, creates, and delivers data. To fix it, business executives apply IT governance.

Now, what is IT governance? How does it keep data protected? Let’s figure out together how IT governance isn’t just about handling technology stuff. It’s also about making sure the company looks good and keeps customer information safe.

What is IT Governance?

IT governance is a plan related to the decision-making rights regarding an organization’s IT service. You can relate IT governance to the captain of a tech ship. It steers the ship (the company’s technology) and also decides what strategies will let the ship run longer while keeping things safe.

Technically, IT governance optimizes IT resources for good value delivery while managing performance and risk related to it by making strategies that align with the company’s goals.

What is the Role of IT Governance in Data Protection?

IT governance frameworks are like well-thought-out rules focused on value creation. It consists of the procedures, policies, and guidelines for data handling with the organization’s regulatory and operational requirements. Here are the principles that contribute to data protection:

Well Defined Policies

IT governance establishes detailed data protection policies and procedures and ensures employees understand and follow them accurately.

Access Control

It implements strict procedures for access control by creating a separate secured network that restricts unauthorized access to sensitive data.

Classifies Data

It classifies the data based on its sensitivity and importance. It helps in applying the exact security measures required for each type of data.

Monitoring Data

It provides a system that takes immediate action on data breaches by regularly monitoring data access and reviewing logs for unusual activity.

Techniques to Encrypt Data

It uses encryption techniques to secure data from online threats using AES-256-bit encryption.

Incident Response Plan

To avoid future data security violations, it provides an incident response plan to identify, contain, and mitigate risk before any attack occurs.

Secure Data Recovery

It implements a robust data backup and recovery strategy. This strategy protects against data loss by regularly backing critical data and testing the restoration process.

Aligns with Regulations

It updates you about data regulations that apply to industries to ensure your practices align with them.

Industry Standard Framework Aligning with IT Governance for Data Protection

Here are several industry-standard frameworks aligning with IT governance to protect data from cyber attacks, hackers, and other data protection challenges:

COBIT

COBIT is a set of control objectives that organizations can use to assess and manage their IT risks, including data protection risks.

• It provides organization objectives to improve and maintain high-quality data to support business decisions.
• It benefits how business entrepreneurs can deal with data security risks and make the right decisions for developing an infrastructure for secure data handling.
• It helps improve IT security with an antivirus script encrypted to protect data from online threats.
• Data security breach incidents can be reduced by following the monitoring policies set by COBIT.

ITIL for GDPR

General Data Protection Regulations is a framework that concerns data breaches stored by the data controller. It was introduced in 2018 and not only impacted the technical sector of IT infrastructure but also led to a revision of the concepts of IT Governance.

To deal with the problem related to GDPR, the ITIL framework is the best solution that provides good governance of IT services. Below, you’ll find how ITIL ( Information Technology Infrastructure Library) helps in maintaining GDPR:

Challenge

According to Article 33 of GDPR, after becoming aware of a data breach, the data controller must notify its supervisor about it no later than 72 hours. Meanwhile, in Article 55, unless the data breach is unlikely to risk the person’s rights, a delayed notification to the supervisor can be reasoned.

ITIL Solutions

To avoid violations of GDPR articles 33 and 55, ITIL suggests classifying incidents with the severity level and an immediate trigger if that level is breached.

• When dealing with data security violations, an immediate communication channel to the data controller should be triggered.
• After triggering, the controller shall analyze the root cause of the breach.
• Immediate contact with supervisors when dealing with dangerous data threats.
• Conduct surveys for improvement to avoid future data security incidents.

ISO 27001

ISO 27001 is an internationally recognized framework that provides standards for managing Information security systems. It is a comprehensive approach to data protection with risk management and security controls.

NIST Cyber security

NIST is a framework developed by the US that focuses on a structured approach to managing and reducing cyber threats. It identifies, protects, responds to, and recovers from cybersecurity incidents.

CIS Controls

CIS Controls provides 18 strategies to improve an organization’s cybersecurity posture by managing and protecting data efficiently.

BS 10012

British Standard 10012 manages personal information that aligns with data protection regulations, including GDPR.

By following these frameworks, an organization can enhance its IT services for data protection and gain customer trust.

So, What’s Your Decision?

With the increase in security attacks, there are about 87 publicly disclosed data breach cases with 1.46 million compromised records.

This ratio declares how vital data protection is in the IT sector. Through IT governance, you can overcome this defect with excellent decision-making strategies.

So, apply IT governance and become the next trustable company like Microsoft, IBM, and Google.