Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
The Rise of the Chief Data Officer, a Federal Data Privacy Wake-up Call, and AI Training on Real Data
By Dave Sikora, CEO, ALTR
COVID-19 accelerated both the transition towards the data cloud and the
need to operate in hybrid environments for many companies globally. And this
transition has opened the gate to unprecedented network vulnerabilities,
exposed data and more. In fact, 2021 witnessed a unique era of cyberattacks
across critical organizations and across various industries. A remote workforce
means that data is being accessed from anywhere and everywhere by users across
organizations' multiple departments. This makes it absolutely essential that
corporations have proper data governance policies and privacy measures in place
to provide data usage visibility, automated access controls and other
mechanisms to stop credentialed access threats. Additionally, data security can
no longer be a niche focus - it has to be a priority across the company,
necessitating a tool that democratizes data control and eases an organization's
secure movement to the cloud.
As a result of the increasing investment in cloud data security and
privacy, we can expect to see these three trends in 2022:
First, the Chief Data Officer
will rise in the C-suite rankings. The democratization of data use creates an opportunity for companies to
become truly data-driven, but many currently don't have a good handle on what's
going inside their business. At the same time, data plays an essential role in
leadership decisions and understanding of data is increasingly a necessity at
the C-suite and board levels.
Enter: the elevation of the Chief Data Officer, who will take on
increasing responsibility for enabling a data-driven business. The appointment
of a CDO increased
from 12% in 2012 to 65% in 2021; this trend will continue, as companies prioritize digitization and data use.
As CEOs double down on data, we can expect to see the Chief Data Officer rise
in importance, perhaps even above the CIO, as all business functions turn to a
data-driven strategy.
Next, businesses will have a
Sarbanes-Oxley sized wake-up call about federal data privacy and security
standards. There is no way to
protect data privacy, access and use without first ensuring that the data is
secure - a complex job for governance and security teams that will be made
clearer by regulations this year.
A big regulatory storm looms on the horizon: a U.S. federal data
privacy law on the level of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 could be coming,
which would require corporate officers of publicly traded companies to
personally certify that the company's data security/protection statements are
accurate. I certainly hope that we don't see scandals as shocking as those of
Enron, but if data breaches continue to worsen, we can expect legislation that
requires publicly traded companies to have board-level data audit committees
documenting how the company is protecting sensitive data, with CEOs and CDOs
required to sign accountability statements.
Finally, successful security for
sensitive data will enable real data training sets in AI. It's always better to operate on real data
instead of synthetic data, and that's especially true for training algorithms,
where it is difficult to completely remove personalization. Rather than baking
in potential bias from synthetic data - which still has to be defined by humans
- data teams will be able to use data security technology to keep PII in place
while still feeding algorithms relevant information.
Companies that hide away their sensitive data for fear of exposure will
no longer have to stress about this - it will become increasingly common to be
able to mask sensitive data and protect privacy while training more accurate
algorithms. While the technology is still evolving, the result will be more
accuracy and lower risk of data breaches.
As we look to the future, and as enterprises continue to focus on
moving and consolidating data into the burgeoning cloud data warehouse
ecosystem, data privacy and security will continue to be of increasing
importance. In particular, as this trend gathers momentum, we will see an
increasingly important role for the Chief Data Officer in the C-suite, a
purposeful shift in federal data security policies, and an increased ability to
share data securely enabling a new era of real data AI training.
2022 presents an opportunity for both private and public organizations
to be more proactive in their data security efforts to prepare for the road
ahead.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A software industry veteran, Dave is the CEO of ALTR, the leading provider of data control and protection software for
enterprises. Before joining ALTR, Dave was most recently the CEO of Stratfor, a
global intelligence and research firm with industry-leading products focused on
emerging global physical and cybersecurity threats. Dave has previously served as
CEO of 2 public and 5 private, venture capital backed software companies and
has held board director positions with 4 public companies. He executed the first Internet
Software IPO in the State of Texas in 1995 and sold the company 2.5 years later
for 4X its IPO value. Dave is an alumnus of the University of Houston
and Harvard Business School.