CDO Magazine Interview Series

Empowering CDOs to Innovate Around Data with Unified Data Controls

Mike Meriton, co-founder and COO of the EDM Council, speaks with Securiti’s CEO, Rehan Jalil, about Unified Data Controls (UDC) for multi-cloud environments. This interview looks at how this new UDC architectural framework can enable CDOs to solve many of the security, privacy, governance and compliance challenges they face today.

Rehan highlights that CDOs are facing the reality that data is growing at a staggering rate, which brings with it massive opportunities but at the same time, risk. The cloud brings with it the ability to scale and automate, and innovate, and data is the new oil that drives value, but at the same time, if not handled properly, that oil can burn you.

Organizations now face the task of managing not only the massive scale of data, but also the sprawl of systems and data across different jurisdictions across multi-cloud environments.

Speaking of organization responsibilities around sensitive data, Rehan highlights that organizations:

Rehan highlights that the way to utilize multi-cloud most effectively is to bring a layer of unification that provides visibility across all corporate data. This unification layer provides insight into what type of data is where, who has access to it, as well as the unification of controls across these vast multi-cloud data environments.

When asked about automating processes within the unification environment, Rehan says that a foundational part of building out automation while building out unification is doing away with manual processes around data and system discovery. The process must be completely automated across multicloud environments, for both structured and unstructured data.

Sharing his views on operationalizing a unified data controls environment, Rehan emphasizes that it is key to invest in an environment that has automated controls that allows for granular insight, and puts in place guardrails around the data. This framework actually enables sharing, innovation and more use of data by ensuring data is secure, compliance is met, and not having the anxiety of making a mistake and exposing the organization to risk.