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Every day, companies need to work with large volumes of data related to their operations and activities. Thus, the quality and security of user data play a critical role in the modern business world. If data are of high quality, organizations can use them to target the audience, improve marketing processes, and enhance operations. If data are secure, managers may be confident regarding the confidentiality of all the corporate information and the safety of operations (Brown, DeHayes, Slater, Martin, & Perkins, 2011). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze possible risks associated with poor data quality and poor data security that can significantly influence organizations activities and to evaluate the role of data governance.
Data in Information Systems and Risks of Poor Data Quality
The role of data and its quality in information systems is critical because effectively collected, organized, and stored data influence the speed and accuracy of all operations in the company, including sales, relationships with customers, and financial activities. As a result, if data have poor quality, many risks or challenges can be faced. First, erroneous data tend to influence internal operations in an organization because a mistake in one set of data becomes mentioned or duplicated in other sets and activities, leading to more errors.
Second, organizations need to spend many resources to overcome problems associated with applying poor data and identify and correct mistakes. Third, productivity and performance also become affected because extensive resources are used for re-checking and re-organizing poor data (Brown et al., 2011). The examples of such poor data can be observed in online stores when ineffectively filled-in, operated, and categorized data related to customer orders lead to mistakes in delivering orders, increased costs, and decreased customer satisfaction.
Two methods that can be used to ensure the data are of high quality are the implementation of data quality policies and the regular inspection of data to determine potential errors. Thus, organizations need to implement data quality policies to state and follow standards and criteria for data to be inputted and outputted to support operations (Brown et al., 2011; Data: Ethical use and storage, n.d.). In the context of these policies, it is advisable to recommend data storage structures appropriate to address a companys needs. Furthermore, it is also necessary to use software for databases to test data quality and check potential errors.
Risks of Poor Data Security
When poor data security is observed, a range of risks can be faced by a company. The problem is that poor data security leads to stealing confidential corporate data, customers private and financial data, and installing programs that corrupt the work of the whole system. From this perspective, the primary goal of managers is to ensure all their financial and corporate data are secure and customers data are encrypted to eliminate unauthorized access (Brown et al., 2011).
An example of a recent data breach is the attack on Macys websites to steal customers personal and credit card information. Although the authorities of Macys warned their customers regarding problems associated with this data breach, the effect of the situation on the company was significant (ODonnell, 2019). Thus, the company could disclose customers private and credit card data that can be sold on the dark web. Furthermore, the companys websites needed to be checked, and more resources were required. The percentage of online sales and the rate of visiting the websites could potentially decrease. Additionally, customers loyalty could also be affected, leading to fewer sales.
Role of Data Governance
To guarantee that corporate data are kept secure, it is necessary to refer to the principle of data governance. This principle explains the strategy for organizing, structuring, storing, and using data to ensure they are protected. The reference to data governance allows for determining particular owners of data to avoid uncontrolled sharing and the use of resources of information, determining supervisors for data management and use, and determining administrators of databases. In the context of using data governance strategies, the risks of disclosing data and its poor management become limited (Brown et al., 2011).
The reason is that data ownership is associated with the idea of responsibility, and information is protected more effectively. Data access is also granted in the context of the applied data governance strategies, which allows for enhancing security within an organization (Bean, 2016). From this perspective, the role of data governance in contributing to data security in companies is critical.
Conclusion
Data quality and security are important issues to consider when planning how an organization will organize and manage its information resources and different types of data. If data are of poor quality, it is possible to expect the flow of errors affecting all types of operations. If data are not secured, it is possible to become a victim of cyberattacks and lose customers because of data breach issues. In this context, much attention should be paid to data governance as an approach to organizing data management and security as a strategy to be applied in a company depending on its specific needs.
References
Bean, R. (2016). The case for data governance. The Forbes. Web.
Brown, C. V., DeHayes, D. W., Slater, J., Martin, W. E., & Perkins, W. C. (2011). Managing information technology (7th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.
Data: Ethical use and storage [Video file]. (n.d.). Web.
ODonnell, L. (2019). Macys suffers data breach by Magecart cybercriminals. ThreatPost. Web.
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