Data Ownership in Cybersecurity

One of the most important concepts when it comes to data when it comes to cybersecurity is who should own what data & who should end up being responsible for said data. There are many different terms for the different kinds of people involved in data ownership as well as the relationship that different people have with their data as it relates to a computer network. For those who want to get involved in the field of cybersecurity, data ownership and the terms related to the concept are important and should be remembered if you are looking to get a cybersecurity certification such as the CISSP to show off your abilities to potential employers!

One important topic related to the ownership of digital data is the data subject. What is a data subject? Well, it is the person who might be referring to a piece of data or a subject that a piece of information is about. The data owner is some entity - whether it is a person or an organization as a whole, but usually a person - that collects and creates personal information and data. The data owner is a very important job since that person is usually considered legally responsible and accountable for protecting the data that they have generated. Did you create some data about a person's address and phone number and remain the data owner? Then you are responsible for protecting that particular piece of data and educating others in your organization about how to protect the data from anyone willing to steal, modify, or delete this information for malicious reasons. You also need to provide policies, regulatory requirements, and specific protective measures that are expected of others like data custodians in order to be compliant with different regulations and guidelines. All of this might seem pretty complicated, but all of that is why a data owner is considered such an important role!

Data controllers are people who have pretty much the same job as a data owner, but they do that when a true data owner is not available or does not exist for a piece of very personal digital data. If you have some piece of software that creates this kind of data and leaves you with no true data owner to take responsibility, the data controller takes over. Meanwhile, the data processor is someone or something as an entity that works under the direction of the owner or controller, such as the IT department.

Next, you have the data custodian. The custodian handles the data daily. And as a final term, you have a data steward who uses the data only for business purposes. All of this data ownership and jobs are created as a way to protect privacy. Privacy is all about the ability of a person or entity to protect their digital data that goes out onto a physical or computer network. Privacy implies someone can opt in or out of providing their data for a network to be used by an organization. Then, the data must be protected, only kept as long as it might be needed for certain operations, must be used for a purpose within legal and ethical guidelines, and a person who is having their data used will be notified if their data is being generated and/or used for specific purposes.

All of these systems are being created in cybersecurity because it is easier than ever for many people to have data shared over the internet. However, new methods make it easier to apply protections to data while allowing it to be easily sent over long distances.