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Is Your Data Safe? How to Assess Your Data Risk - Part 1

Christophe Toum
Talend

Data is one of a company's most valuable assets — but Talend's recent Data Health Survey found only 40% of executives always trust the data they work with.

Today, we have codes and inspections for physical infrastructure, satisfaction surveys for employees, and up-time monitors and stability tests for websites. But are we doing everything we can to understand the degree to which our data is exposed to risk?

There's more to security than protecting yourself from hackers. On one end of the spectrum, you have those big exposures to governmental regulations and security breaches that can shake an entire organization. But even small things — like a little bit of bad data entering the system — can cause a trickle down effect that impacts every department.

We could all be doing a better job of assessing (and mitigating) risk to our data. The key is to start small: just make sure that you have the right data in the right place.

Then you want to make sure that the right people have access to the data and the wrong people don't have access to the data.

Once you have that covered, and you've defined processes for keeping your data clean and standardized, then you can start focusing on making that a daily practice. All it takes is the right combination of people, processes and technology.

What Do We Mean by "Risk?"

When most people think about the risks associated with data, they immediately recall the headline-grabbing data breaches that seem to flood our news feeds with alarming regularity.

But it doesn't take an epic leak affecting millions of users to have serious consequences for most companies. Even a handful of exposed records could have serious legal, financial and reputational repercussions. Fines for GDPR violations alone can run in the millions of dollars, to say nothing of the incalculable cost of losing consumer trust in an increasingly connected and competitive marketplace.

How do these breaches happen?

It can be something as simple as the right data in the wrong place. So much of our conversation about security centers around personally identifiable information (PII). If PII data isn't identified or isn't in the right field — for example, payment information erroneously mapped to an unprotected field and viewed by unauthorized individuals — you could be at risk of exposing some very sensitive information.

But external risks aren't the only dangers we should be worried about. A few years ago, IBM famously calculated that bad data costs US businesses over$3 trillion per year. This is death by a thousand cuts, parceled out in seconds, minutes and hours lost to manual data correction, re-running suspect reports and pursuing strategies and programs that were originally scoped based on data that was later revealed to be faulty.

Of course, the volumes of data we must deal with has grown by over 400% since IBM released that study — and it's only growing.

So how much could we be losing today?

And how much do we stand to lose over the coming years?

Taking all these dangers into account, one thing is clear: no company can afford to expose its data to risk.

Go to: Is Your Data Safe? How to Assess Your Data Risk - Part 2

Christophe Toum is Senior Director of Product Management at Talend

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Is Your Data Safe? How to Assess Your Data Risk - Part 1

Christophe Toum
Talend

Data is one of a company's most valuable assets — but Talend's recent Data Health Survey found only 40% of executives always trust the data they work with.

Today, we have codes and inspections for physical infrastructure, satisfaction surveys for employees, and up-time monitors and stability tests for websites. But are we doing everything we can to understand the degree to which our data is exposed to risk?

There's more to security than protecting yourself from hackers. On one end of the spectrum, you have those big exposures to governmental regulations and security breaches that can shake an entire organization. But even small things — like a little bit of bad data entering the system — can cause a trickle down effect that impacts every department.

We could all be doing a better job of assessing (and mitigating) risk to our data. The key is to start small: just make sure that you have the right data in the right place.

Then you want to make sure that the right people have access to the data and the wrong people don't have access to the data.

Once you have that covered, and you've defined processes for keeping your data clean and standardized, then you can start focusing on making that a daily practice. All it takes is the right combination of people, processes and technology.

What Do We Mean by "Risk?"

When most people think about the risks associated with data, they immediately recall the headline-grabbing data breaches that seem to flood our news feeds with alarming regularity.

But it doesn't take an epic leak affecting millions of users to have serious consequences for most companies. Even a handful of exposed records could have serious legal, financial and reputational repercussions. Fines for GDPR violations alone can run in the millions of dollars, to say nothing of the incalculable cost of losing consumer trust in an increasingly connected and competitive marketplace.

How do these breaches happen?

It can be something as simple as the right data in the wrong place. So much of our conversation about security centers around personally identifiable information (PII). If PII data isn't identified or isn't in the right field — for example, payment information erroneously mapped to an unprotected field and viewed by unauthorized individuals — you could be at risk of exposing some very sensitive information.

But external risks aren't the only dangers we should be worried about. A few years ago, IBM famously calculated that bad data costs US businesses over$3 trillion per year. This is death by a thousand cuts, parceled out in seconds, minutes and hours lost to manual data correction, re-running suspect reports and pursuing strategies and programs that were originally scoped based on data that was later revealed to be faulty.

Of course, the volumes of data we must deal with has grown by over 400% since IBM released that study — and it's only growing.

So how much could we be losing today?

And how much do we stand to lose over the coming years?

Taking all these dangers into account, one thing is clear: no company can afford to expose its data to risk.

Go to: Is Your Data Safe? How to Assess Your Data Risk - Part 2

Christophe Toum is Senior Director of Product Management at Talend

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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