We all have an innate desire to protect what we value the most, so naturally, we lock our houses and cars, at least in a big city. The same holds true in the world of data management; we secure our vital data assets to ensure that unauthorized individuals are barred from access.
Think about the daunting task of ensuring the safety of a toddler in a large house with many drawers and cabinets that are within easy reach. What if there were a way to automatically secure each potentially hazardous spot, based on defined criteria? In data security, this is precisely where semantics comes into play.
How Semantics Can Simplify Security and Governance
First, you identify all of the instances that contain potentially sensitive information, such as email addresses or social security numbers. Then, instead of securing each and every one individually, you can globally apply a semantic definition that allows only certain people to access this information. In the Denodo Platform, such definitions, applied in this way, are called “global policies.”
Think Globally
Global policies will automatically apply to all of the relevant instances across your enterprise, based on the semantic definition. If you were to onboard a new data asset that contains sensitive information, instead of creating yet another policy, yet another “lock,” to prevent unwanted data access, all you have to do is tag it, and it will be covered by an existing global policy, to be secured appropriately.
Flexible Data Security and Governance
The Denodo Platform enables security measures that are based not only on user roles but also on additional attributes, such as a user’s location. With such a policy in place, for example, an employee on vacation might not have access to the same data that they can access in the office.
The Denodo Platform goes even further: In addition to enabling global policies for data security, the Denodo Platform enables such policies to be enabled for data governance. Leveraging global policies, organizations can, for example, automatically standardize the spelling of the company name, across the entire enterprise.
Simple is Powerful
Global semantics brings simplicity and efficiency to data security and governance. It enables organizations to implement smart, overarching policies to protect what they value most.
- Data Security and Governance, Enhanced by Semantics - October 5, 2023