Businesses today are data-driven. The right data from the right sources with the right analytics engines can produce insight-ready data that transforms businesses – making them more competitive or even reinventing business models in this digital era.

With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is inevitable that the amount of data that companies create, collect, and store is increasing exponentially. As data volume grows and gets more dispersed, ensuring data regulatory compliance becomes extremely challenging.

Privacy laws have existed for some time. But data privacy laws in most countries are now moving beyond their infancy stages and starting to address the issues that are inherent in today’s data-driven business landscape. For example, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in May 2018, provides comprehensive data protection and privacy for individuals within the EU and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU.

Other countries around the world have also been implementing their own data protection laws. In Southeast Asia, we have Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act 2014, Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2015, Philippines’s Data Privacy Act 2012, Vietnam’s controversial Cybersecurity Law 2018, and Indonesia’s Bill on the Protection of Private Personal Data, which is being pushed to be implemented. With the myriad of data privacy regulations across the world, harvesting the full value of data becomes all the more challenging for businesses today as they strive to comply with those regulations.

To deal with this, businesses need a more global approach based on a common framework across all data privacy regulations. Simply put, businesses need a well-rounded data governance program. Data governance is the management of the overall availability, usability, integrity and security of data used in a business or enterprise. A robust data governance program helps to support data protection compliance and broader adherence to data sovereignty regulations.

Since the inception of the GDPR, data governance practices are mostly based on the GDPR framework, as most of the data legislations implemented in other countries have also used the GDPR as the foundation of their own data protection and privacy regulations.

Talend’s toolsets for data governance explains the steps needed to operationalise a data governance program for data compliance. It applies to any data protection legislation and can be applied as a generic framework for cross legislation compliance. To find out more about Talend’s whitepaper on the 16 practical steps towards global data privacy compliance, click here.