Data Governance and Compliance Requirements – Jabari Norton, Privacera

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstrong TV. I have an interesting guests for us this segment.

His name is Jabari Norton. He is with privacera and just so you know, we were supposed to really meet Jabari in person or in Las Vegas for AWS re:invent. But with the chaos of 55,000 people and that small an area it we never got it to happen.

So we we stayed with it though, and I'm glad you're Barry has been able to join us now. Hey Jabari, how are you? I'm great.

How are you doing Alan? Good as they said I'm sorry. We didn't hook up in Vegas there.

But you know as we were talking is this is as good and we don't have to get each other sick and everyone else. I got sick out that way. Welcome and thanks for joining us tomorrow.

I guess we need to we should really start with a little bit about you. And then maybe if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about private Sarah. Yeah, happy to share.

Yeah, so so far Norton my lead Global sales and alliances team. So everything is essentially Revenue facing for privacera. But in the tech space for over 25 years now both, you know mostly in the SAS World both on the cyber security side as well as the big data analytic side.

So this is turned up number eight for me. So it's either. Hey, I really enjoy this stuff or a glutton for punishment as it or a little boat or a little bit of both working with early stage companies and I've been in privacy just under a year and what really, you know, really brought me here was really the vision and the opportunity and the size of the market that we're really trying to address which is around data security governance.

And how do we really take? You know, you know the visibility And drive better visibility but also Access Control policy and compliance around how companies were able to access that data. And really how do we help modernize the use of that data by providing better usability allowing these companies to kind of stay in compliance, but I'll do better data sharing as they're going through that.

Excellent. I love it. So we were going to talk a little bit about today about the role and of the data stakeholders.

Before we jump into it. Look my my view is this one of the nice things about 2022 and there was plenty of not nice things in 2022, but one of the nice things was and then we we came we someone hidden from the head and we remembered that it's all about the data right applications are great. And we spend a lot of money time and effort making some really great applications, but the applications are no more than Windows into our into data, right and in data, that's priming Prime, right?

It's it's all about the data. and and I'm seeing so whether it's data security data analysis, I mean Data, you know storage. It's we've really started focusing on data again, and and that's great because that's where the focus supposed to be.

And I think to that but I mean, I think also the reason why I think it it continues to be especially the largest organization in the world. They still continue to struggle to become data driven, right even pandemic hit in 2020 hit everybody digital transformation moves the cloud massive amount, but you know, you still see whether it's you know Gartner, right? He talks about that like even through like their view through 2025 that like organizations who are trying them scale.

They need a modern approach of how we they view that data and then analyze that data and provide governance on top of that but a lot of folks are still struggling with just the culture of it as well as I mean while we provide Great Tech and a capability around that there's also people in process that have to come along with that. So now that we have access to the data getting the data into the cloud making it more accessible is great. How do we bring that people process and that governance and that security on top of that to make it easier to share and get out to the masses to kind of to make money and or kind of analyze Absolutely.

So let's talk about the culture of data like that. I mean, obviously this is something you you thought about a bit and the folks of private Sarah. How would you how do you put your thumb on that?

Yeah, you know and what we see here as far as the culture of data is there's a balance right is there's this really move to how do you democratize right the data, right and it's really more trying to drive towards self-service analytics getting more and more of the decision-making around data closer to the data owners and the data stewards. But the challenge that we have me we are customer base is generally the fortune 2000 or Global 2000 and that in that case the struggle that they have is these data consumers are hungry to consume that data sales marketing HR Finance, you know data scientists data analyst teams Etc as they're trying to create new data products. And revenue generating opportunities, but where the rub is or the struggle is is with you know, the it teams that have to sit in the middle that then have to report to or you know, kind of speak to privacy speak to security and speak to governance and so really the modernization at least in my view and I think the company's view as we see this is we're starting to have to see these worlds start to come together generally like you had cisos governance teams Etc on one side.

You have it kind of stuck in the middle. You have the chief data officer dating analytics teams departments Etc all kind of working in their silos and what really the modernization and the change is, how do we bring all those teams together working collectively and cohesively And everybody getting what they need either visibility ability to access ability to control ability audit all that information and understanding all that data in their environment. Agreed agreed.

All right, so let's jump into stakeholders and and you know, which kind of the meat of what we want to talk about today Jabari. You've already started. You know mentioning some of the the roles of these stakeholders, but can we can we go a little deeper?

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean are you know our primary stakeholders? I mean have been and can continue to be really the platform owners and the platform teams that that run the analytics platforms.

You know, our privaceras is primarily focused on analytical workloads. So these are the analytic platforms across all three major major clouds as well as the the systems that sit on top of that like databricks or snowflake Starburst things like that and who are consensuous generally are the chief data officer as more and more companies are doing that in some places and some more mature organizations were starting to see Chief data analytics officers. They're really focused on the analytics side and then working with different product and usually product managers or product owners on the platform teams who run those analytic platforms.

So as we're looking at that, they're the where they're having to now think about is not just hey, I have more users coming into the data lake or to the data platform or to the warehouse or until my data mesh environment and I have more data those were generally the kpis that they actually had. How do I get more data? How do I get more users access?

They're now the kpis are starting to shift and the kpis are starting to go to you know measuring how how fast they can access the data. So from the time a new data set hits and my environment to the time of data set scientists. Can run the first query.

How long does that take? Can I shorten that from generally weeks? Today's an ideally through automation to ours the second kpi.

That's a really trying to do which is new Allen and what's unique here is security is top of mind right with breaches and things like that that you've seen across now. Everybody's really is a keen sense around data security. It's not just the responsibility, of course security.

It's now responsibility of the data teams. And so they're looking at how do they reduce, you know, really the the access and the privilege to this data, you know should Jabari have access to all of this data in this bucket or should he only have access to a couple tables and how do you start to drive finer grain control? And that's better security better capabilities and stay ahead from a compliance standpoint as it all from our privacy standpoint.

So that's what we're really starting to see the maturity happen is the kpis and what they're driving towards are much at a much finer level. And that's where Technologies like privacera and how they're really thinking about overall governance of this data really comes in and plays a huge part. Yeah, I think we could look at.

You know data governance. And and this and and I agree with everything you said especially about the security stuff. Right security is truly truly for someone who's been in security 20 plus years.

Security really has ascended. But I I don't think he can have this discussion without talking about. compliance with you know government Regulatory Agencies whether we're talking about EU.

Stuff or you know the the patchwork of what we have here in the US. Right and and how this is. I think 2023 might be a year of change in this actually.

I think we're gonna see more. Coming from from the EU, you know, it's not just gdpr anymore. You you're gonna have more regulation.

I think you I don't know if we'll ever have a Federal Regulation here in the US, but we're seeing more and more States. Right jump on this. How do you how do you navigate that?

It's hard, right and that's really what we try and help our clients with, you know, a lot of clients come with us, both multinational and european-based customers that you know, they're like, they're my primary use cases. How do I stay in compliance with gdpr and how do I do that? How do I you know, can we build workflows from a compliance standpoint to meet the right to be forgotten requirements there CCPA and now ccpr I think right are you know kind of ever evolving people that have you know, retail or b2c operations like in California, which will start to spread Nationwide.

Oh, it's gonna be the year of compliance is going to be a big piece to this and staying within regular regulatory requirements. And then also things like HIPAA, right and things like that. We have a large number of healthcare organizations that have to meet those mandates and requirements.

So I I would agree with you all. This is only going to increase and what really needs to change and really needs to shift is, you know classical governance and how we think about governance where the data is who owns it worth data. Come came from is important.

That's really what people thought about it with governance. And now even with Gartner with your most recent hype cycle that they just launched they're really say now the focus needs to move towards action. How do you action that?

And really that's where data security governance comes in is, you know, not only understanding the data, but is there anything sensitive in there? How should I protect that data and then who should have access that's really the evolution that we're seeing and we're starting to see with a lot of our organizations that we have. And so we work closely like a lot of folks have you know, invested in data catalogs.

We work closely with data catalog vendors and really drive that last mile of access security and the governance piece on top of that. With workflows that are built in the allow our customers to meet their compliance requirements. Yep.

one other topic I want to bring up because I know what kind of running low on time here, but To break the biggest not problem, but I think that the the chore we need to get our head wrapped around and our arms wrapped around is you know as as we Embrace Dana more and more. There's more and more of it. And so you know, how do you how do you continue to use data or use data better?

You know, I don't want to stay away from Big Data because that's a well-worn term. But the fact is the amounts of data that organizations are dealing with almost demand more automation. In order to deal with it and more automation is a double-edged sword.

In a lot of ways, right it allows us to deal with big data allows us to do more faster, but also allows us to maybe do some things or some things happen that we don't foresee or want. We a little bit of loss of control if you will. How do you see that playing out?

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to really you know, how do you control that data? Right. So in a c and a massive data what's important is you know, do you know where all your data is, right?

Okay, great. First first and foremost get a view and all your data is that data? Clean?

Is it the right quality in you know, have you identified the owners, you know of that data, there's a lot of other things and that's outside of privacy. There's a lot of other things that like data catalogs and other people have in there environment just kind of getting their arms around that data. And then as you have that what's really important as part of that it's not the amount of data.

It's like hey you do you understand your data? What is there a sense of the data in there? And these are pii data in there?

Yes, or no. Like do you have that you tag that? Have you described that data?

Do you understand that should that data be masked? Should that data be encrypted? You know, how should that data, you know flow through or be stored.

And your data environments and then who should have access but I think the important piece Allen I think you you highlighted auditability, right? Because just because once you get into the automation piece and that in those processes are automated you need to be able to audit and be able to prove back mostly to either Regulators or Consultants or you know Auditors who actually come in to be able to prove Here's my policy. Here's how we're protecting our data and your data potentially as a consumer and here are the audit trails and how we've actually put those policies in place.

Here's here's what we've granted. Here's what we revoked. Here's what we denied and in the event unfortunate of an unfortunate breach to be able to go back and replay all of that to be able to prove.

You know, what steps you took to actually protect that data. So I don't think it's volume of data that generally is challenge. Most people just you know, they don't have a good handle on all of those components of it.

And if you have those those all of those components covered the size of the data doesn't matter because you're still applying the same policies same principles. Um against all of that data that's in your environment. And so it's a challenge for the biggest organizations in the world because their data environments are always changing they'll do Acquisitions.

They're moving to the cloud. They have multi-cloud engagement stuff. Like that's what's not it's not easy.

That is for sure and that's really you know, what we're really trying to help customers kind of navigate through as they continue to be much more data driven long term. Got it Hey, Joe, Bobby. We're overtime man.

I appreciate you coming on here. com for people want to get more information. com great place to come.

You know, we'd love to kind of have a conversation do more around what we're dealing and how we're helping customers do more with their data. Excellent. Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas actually people watching this may not see this till after the new year, but Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you man. Keep up the great work. We'll be in touch.

Thanks Alan appreciate. Thanks for having ready. We're gonna take a break here on Tech strung.

We'll be right back.