Data Management Strategies to Ensure Operational Resilience

Modern businesses must strive for operational resilience throughout their enterprise to ensure success and accomplish their business goals. Most organizations struggle to ensure continuous operational excellence across all business functions.

Today, most businesses depend heavily on a complex web of tools and processes. It is crucial to have a holistic view of the entire organization to ensure resilience to regulatory scrutiny and volatile market movements.

Businesses that want to break down the silos and complexity must emphasize improving their data management processes to instill better understanding within all teams.

ET Bureau has an insightful interaction with Safi Raza, Senior Director of Cybersecurity at Fusion Risk Management, to understand how modern businesses can manage data with growing complexity and threat landscape:

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ET Bureau: Why is breaking down data silos within an organization critical to ensuring operational resilience?

Safi Raza:

Breaking down data silos within an organization is critical to ensuring operational resilience for many reasons:

Centralized data management helps streamline business processes and increase collaboration

Centralized data repositories make it easier for teams to collaborate on projects and initiatives, resulting in better cross-functional communication, more effective problem-solving, and increased innovation. Additionally, breaking down silos causes information to flow freely, which helps streamline processes and enables faster decision-making, leading to improved operational efficiency.

Increasing visibility gives rise to better risk management

Enterprises can’t protect what they don’t know. When data siloes are present within different business units, it can make it difficult for organizations to manage and identify potential security risks. By breaking down these silos and integrating data across the organization, decision-makers can gain better visibility into their data, including where it is stored, who has access to it, and how they use it. Gaining visibility into data is critical to protecting an organization’s data and ensuring operational resilience.

ET Bureau: How should businesses approach data integration?

Safi Raza:

When approaching data integration, it is beneficial to take a systematic approach. The first step is to identify the objectives of the integration project. This step involves understanding the problem that needs to be solved and the desired outcomes. Once the businesses establish objectives, the next step is identifying the data sources that need integration.

Based on the requirements of the business should choose an appropriate data integration approach is. This decision will identify the tools and technologies organizations need to leverage in the integration process. Once the enterprises determine their data integration approach, they should design a project plan. The plan should outline milestones, deliverables, and timelines, ensuring the integration project stays on track.

Testing the integration is the next crucial step. This step ensures that the integration works correctly and that the data is accurate, complete, and high-quality. Once the teams complete the testing, enterprises can roll out integration into production.

Finally, it is crucial to maintain and update the system as needed. Regular monitoring and maintenance will ensure the integration operates optimally and meets the business’s evolving needs.

ET Bureau: Why is it critical for organizations to protect their operational resilience data?

Safi Raza:

In today’s world, all businesses face the risk of cyber threats. It is no longer a question of “if” a business will be targeted but rather “when.” That is why organizations need to plan for the worst-case scenario and ensure they can continue operating and serving their customers and stakeholders even after a major incident.

Suppose an organization’s operational resilience data, such as its disaster recovery and business continuity plans, are compromised. In that case, they may be unable to recover critical systems and data following a disruption, leading to significant downtime and financial losses.

In addition to the risks of external threats, protecting operational resilience data is critical for compliance and regulatory purposes. Many industries have strict data protection and privacy regulations, and failure to comply with these regulations can result in significant fines and reputational damage.

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ET Bureau: What proactive steps should companies take for data loss prevention?

Safi Raza:

People: One of the most effective measures organizations can take is to educate employees about the risks of data loss and provide awareness training on handling sensitive data. This approach can help prevent accidental data loss and reduce the risk of human error.

Process: Implementing effective access management and data backup processes and encrypting and classifying sensitive data where possible can significantly reduce the risk of data loss. These measures can help ensure that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive data and that data is recoverable during a disaster.

Technology: There are several DLP (Data Loss Prevention) technologies available, which can be endpoint-based, network-based, or cloud-based. Choosing the right DLP technology for the business can help prevent data loss by detecting and preventing data exfiltration attempts, unauthorized access, and other potential data loss scenarios.

By taking these proactive steps, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of data loss and ensure the security and privacy of their sensitive data.

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