Data governance has emerged as one of the top topics at this year’s Data Cloud Summit. Understanding what’s happening in one’s data environment in the generative AI era is critical.

That’s what Theom Inc. is seeking to manage, according to Navindra Yadav (pictured, left), co-founder and chief executive officer of Theom, a data control plane that aims to tackle a number of important questions.

Theom’s Navindra Yadav and Tradeweb Markets’ Bala Rajagopalan talk to theCUBE about data governance in the AI era.

“What data do you have? Who’s got access to this data?” Yadav asked. “What are they doing with this data? For what purpose are they using this data? How is data flowing inside your organization?”

Yadav and Bala Rajagopalan (right), chief information security officer of Tradeweb Markets LLC, spoke with theCUBE Research analysts Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight at Data Cloud Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the value of a unified approach to data access governance and security challenges in the financial industry. (* Disclosure below.)

Theom data governance: Simplifying complex problems is key

Tradeweb is a financial company in the fixed-income trading market. Theom provides a data control plane that offers visibility and control over Tradeweb’s data environment, particularly within Snowflake. The financial industry generally likes to build its own products, and build versus buy is always a topic of conversation, according to Rajagopalan.

“In the past, when a new technology like Snowflake comes into play, everyone tries to build some layer of visibility and governance on top of it with their own tools,” he said.

Then, there will be new players coming in and trying to make things better. Theom is one example, according to Rajagopalan.

“We had been doing our own state of monitoring, using legacy tools and things like that,” he said. “Theom came in, and were able to provide additional visibility.”

There’s no question that AI brings with it the prospect of new threats in a complex ecosystem. In integrating Theom into Snowflake, one can leave some of the worries around data behind and focus on solving other challenges, according to Rajagopalan.

“Simplifying complex problems is key. Every vendor has to strive to make their product. What is the one thing that you are going to simplify for the customers? That’s an important aspect I always look at, because the problems are only going to be complex going forward,” he said. “With a lot of technology innovations, that complexity is not going to reduce, it’s only going to increase. How to simplify that complex problem is [the] number one key.”

When it comes to governance, organizations need to consider two things, according to Yadav. One is securing AI, and the other is using AI to drive security.

“It’’s these unknowns. How do you find those, in those 1% or 0.1% of all the data? What are those unknown things that we are missing and finding those abnormalities? And that’s where you can leverage AI a lot. There are a lot of good techniques,” he said.

Theom does that and secures AI, according to Yadav. But it’s important to do so earlier rather than later.

“At runtime, when you’re trying to insert firewalls and things, that’s a harder problem to solve. And you have very small windows in which you have to respond, like latencies on there,” Yadav said. “Whereas if you’re proactively curtailing the knowledge, what this individual should or should not see, it’s much more effective, rather than trying to withdraw information once it’s leaked out.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Data Cloud Summit:

(* Disclosure: Theom Inc. and Tradeweb Markets LLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Theom, Tradeweb Markets nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE