Data democratization and data mesh have been elevated as enterprises look for ways to allow multiple users to access datasets, all in an effort to better monetize business data and accelerate digital transformations. The downside is that every opportunity to share data is also a chance for data breach, and regulatory authorities around the world are pushing for better governance.

The solution for modern businesses is to build an architecture allowing governance to be implemented across the entire data infrastructure, according to Balaji Ganesan (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Privacera Inc., a unified data access governance platform with an aim to maximize the value of data by providing holistic visibility, secure access and compliant collaboration in the open cloud.

“At Privacera, we are on a mission to help enterprises unlock their data, but do it in a secure and a compliant way,” Ganesan said. “We are in this balance between, we call it a dual mandate, where we see enterprise data teams, on one hand, … being asked to democratize data and make this data available to all parts of the organization. [And] on the other hand, governance, privacy, and compliance mandates have become more stringent.”

Ganesan spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, in advance of the AWS Startup Showcase: New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools event. They discussed how Privacera helps companies balance data sharing with compliance, how the acceleration of cloud migration and changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have increased the need for data governance, and the importance of Privacera having Apache Ranger as the underlying engine. (* Disclosure below.)

Cloud migration increases the need for data governance

Global cloud adoption is expanding rapidly, with Gartner Inc. forecasting end-user spending on public cloud services will reach $396 billion in 2021 and grow 21.7% to $482 billion in 2022. By 2026, public cloud spending is expected to exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021.

The cloud migration process can be challenging for data and security teams who lack automated technology to ensure data security and control, in compliance with the growing number of data privacy regulations, such as the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation and the recent California Consumer Privacy Act, according to Ganesan.

In addition to the lack of automated tools, these IT teams deal with very diverse platforms. Even in a single public cloud such as Amazon Web Services Inc., they have a choice between Snowflake, Databricks, AWS native tools and other services, making it difficult to ensure that the right people have access to the right data, according to Ganesan.

“This is where a tool like Privacera comes in, where we can help them get visibility on their data but also make sure that we can help them with building a unified layer where they can start managing these tools more cohesively,” he explained. “The end result is they can get access to the data faster, but you’re compliant, you’re governed, and you have visibility around who’s doing what. And that’s the big enabler in their data strategy.”

Built on the popular Apache Ranger open-source project, Privacera supports data governance across on-premises and public cloud data and analytics services, enabling businesses to transition to the cloud seamlessly. It features single-pane visibility and access management across hybrid cloud environments through automated sensitive data discovery, fine-grained access control, dynamic masking and encryption, and continuous audit and monitoring in one scalable platform.

COVID-19 brought new challenges to the table

The need for data governance has also grown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to spurring the move to cloud, the pandemic has brought to light the fact that teams are no longer physically located in a single space and cannot sit in a room and control access to data.

With a large number of remote workers, enterprises face the reality that data is transmitted and shared outside physical boundaries, which creates privacy and security vulnerabilities. No wonder there has been a significant increase in cyberattacks through which hackers target personal and sensitive data for use against businesses.

“COVID in our industry, in our world, has brought in massive transformation and massive opportunities to set a new paradigm for how organizations treat governance, as well as the data initiative,” Ganesan stated.

Aiming to guide companies in sharing data without compromising compliance, Privacera operates across multiple industries. In telecommunications, for example, it has helped Comcast Corp. build massive infrastructure on top of AWS to support its digital analytics. Privacera’s responsibility is to weave an architecture of rules and policies that can be used in any type of application.

“Before us, they would be spending a lot of time with manual processes to build that governance, but with an automated layer, with an automated governance, which has pre-built integrations into all the layers, they are now able to go to market faster,” Ganesan said. “Now they’re going into the market with the governance and the compliance built in, so they can have both. Our belief is it’s not zero-sum; your governance, security can be built in with this business agility.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Startup Showcase: New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools event on September 22. (* Disclosure: Privacera Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Privacera nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE