Over the last two decades, there has been a rapid surge in data creation and interactions. This presents significant challenges for businesses globally. Various organizations are trying to grab widely dispersed data and applications to navigate this data flood. Identifying new business opportunities, building product/service personalization, and predicting the latest trends are benefits businesses can enjoy if the data is handled properly. Although most companies understand the true value of effective data management for business resilience, only 27% of the companies managed to get measurable results from data analytics. So, what might they be doing wrong?
The primary reasons might be the digital transformation speed and market turbulence that are reshaping the modern world. Growing data volumes, fluctuating market trends, changing regulations, and rising business competition can make both small and big businesses put resilience first in their data management process.
Data Management for Business Resilience
Data management has been assisting in building business resilience by ensuring organizations maintain data integrity, availability, and accessibility at times of disruptions. It is a critical process to build resilience against threats such as data breaches, cyberattacks, or disasters. Businesses having strong data management strategies are likely to respond to such incidents effectively and quickly while minimizing the negative impact on their brand value and operations.
Over the last couple of decades, the concept of data has witnessed a rapid change. The total amount of data being created, copied, captured, and consumed is about to reach 180 zettabytes by 2025, and it’s showing no signs of stopping. While the data volume is rapidly increasing, its complexities and nature are also changing. This triggers the urgent need for new regulations and policies related to data collection, processing, and management. Also, data management is the cornerstone in navigating digital transformation priorities, business resilience, and crisis management.
Overcoming Key Challenges
To support business resilience and digital transformation practices, one must have dependable data for informed decision-making and overcoming the following challenges:
| Sr.No. | Challenges | Solutions |
| 1 | In the digital ecosystem, data is a valuable but vulnerable asset, exposed to evolving cyber threats like data breaches, phishing, ransomware, etc. | Implement advanced security protocols, regular audits, encryption, and proactive monitoring to protect sensitive information from emerging cyber threats. |
| 2 | Providing equal data access to all stakeholders is impractical, and various entities, including APIs and integrations, can access sensitive information. | Implement differentiated access control, encryption, and secure APIs to limit access to sensitive information based on roles and maintain a secure data environment. |
| 3 | Maintaining the physical and logical integrity of increasingly diverse and abundant data is an ongoing challenge for businesses. | Regularly monitor data using advanced data quality management tools to preserve both physical and logical integrity across the data ecosystem. |
| 4 | Effective data governance is critical to ensure that data management tools uphold data privacy, security, and usability, avoiding poor decision-making and business losses. | Establish strict data governance policies and frameworks that ensure data is accurate, secure, private, and available for decision-makers within the organization. |
| 5 | Any loss, corruption, or misplacement of data can lead to flawed assumptions, which negatively affect business decisions and outcomes. | Use automated data validation tools, backup systems, and real-time monitoring to prevent data corruption and ensure the integrity of business-critical information. |
| 6 | Data management needs to evolve with the business, requiring adaptable structures that address complex errors during system changes. | Ensure data management tools are flexible and have robust error-detection and correction mechanisms that can adapt to changing business needs over time. |
Core Principles of Data Management for Resilience
Data management aims to ensure that a business can maintain the availability, integrity, and accessibility of its data systems in case of disruptions. It is also important to have proper data measures in place as data is the core aspect of all business operations. So, let’s take a close look at some of the core principles of data management for business resilience:
- Regularly back up important data and applications to secure locations and test them regularly to ensure they can be restored quickly.
- Have multiple copies of critical data so it remains available if a system fails.
- Have a plan for what to do if there’s a disruption or failure, including a list of critical data and applications, backup procedures, and contact information.
- Use firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems to protect against threats like hacking, malware, and phishing attacks.
- Regularly test and maintain data resilience measures to ensure they’re effective and up to date.
- Define policies for maintaining and protecting data, and ensure it complies with regulatory procedures.
- Ensure data is accurate and consistent across the organization and use data audits to remove duplicates and automate processes.
- Define procedures for handling data, including entry, validation, transformation, and reporting.
- Invest in storage systems that support multiple platforms and offer unlimited connectivity.
Implementing Data Management for Resilience
Data management for business resilience, or data resilience ensures that a system can continue to operate without significant loss of functionality or data integrity, even when one part of the system fails. To implement an effective data management plan for resilience, businesses should take the following steps:
- A well-defined disaster recovery plan is essential for minimizing downtime and ensuring that operations can quickly resume. The plan should include a data backup strategy, procedures for data restoration, and system recovery.
- A data backup strategy that follows the 3-2-1-1 rule (a data protection strategy that involves making three copies of data, storing them on two different types of media, keeping one copy offsite, and ensuring one copy is immutable.) is a good way to ensure that backups are safe and available. This means having three copies of the data, with two copies on different types of media and one or more copies in an air-gapped backup.
- Implement a comprehensive cybersecurity and data protection strategy. This can include installing antivirus software, firewalls, and mechanisms to detect intrusions. You should also regularly test your systems and infrastructure to detect security issues.
- Use cloud-based solutions like AWS as they are highly flexible and scalable. They offer rapid data recovery and automated backups without needing to sacrifice security. Businesses can replicate multiple data centers to prevent data loss in case a local disaster strike.
- Use tape backup and air-gapping tools like magnetic tapes for long-term data archiving and to store data offsite. It is a cost-effective solution to store large volumes of data.
How Do We Approach Data Management in TX?
Data management is a continuous process of refinement and transformation that requires a balanced approach to integrate tech solutions, governance frameworks, and human expertise into a single platform. At Tx, we’ve got years of experience in assisting businesses to adopt a resilient data culture and gain a competitive edge in the digital age. We offer comprehensive data management solutions for your unique business needs, which include:
- Advisory services
- Data quality management
- Data governance and compliance audit
- Maturity assessment
- Data security testing
- Continuous validation and testing processes
- Business intelligence
- Data validation testing
- Analysis and reporting
Partnering with Tx would ensure you clear and consolidated data while guaranteeing effective data governance with continuous quality management. Our tailored implementation approach can easily sync with your business process and financial needs.
Summary
Effective data management is essential for building business resilience in today’s fast-evolving digital landscape. As data volumes grow and market conditions change, businesses face increasing challenges, including cyber threats and regulatory compliance. A strong data management strategy ensures data integrity, availability, and security, allowing organizations to respond quickly to disruptions like cyberattacks or system failures. Core principles include regular data backups, secure storage, and real-time monitoring. Implementing robust disaster recovery plans and flexible tools can further enhance resilience.
At Tx, we offer tailored data management solutions to help businesses maintain operational continuity and achieve long-term success. To know how Tx can help with data resiliency, contact our experts now.
