The exponential growth, regulations, and vulnerability of an organization’s stored data require an administrative approach to data management, with assigned roles and responsibilities over specific data sets. Over time, the “data owner” title has emerged as one of these roles. 

The importance of the data owner in modern data management 

A data owner is accountable for a specific data set with which they are familiar, based on their job. Data owners are often senior-level employees in a department who know the department’s data, its relevance, its sensitivity, and its vulnerability to unauthorized access.  

Network administrators create network folders and shares, grant or restrict user access, and perform data cleanup. However, it’s the data owners that these network administrators should consult with. They can ensure all access permissions are correct, that files are being stored in the right locations, and that specific files are retained or deleted.  

Reducing the burden on IT teams 

As we’ve visited our customers over the years, we’ve listened to stories about overburdened network administrators. These visits have been instrumental in helping us define and engineer automated network management capabilities in products like OpenText File Dynamics. Some customers have expressed a desire to offload specific storage management tasks to others, including data owners. One of our first offerings to meet this need was the Quota Manager application in File Dynamics. It allowed designated users, such as help desk administrators or support personnel, to adjust user home folders or collaborative storage folder quotas without requiring permissions to the file system. 

Introducing a powerful tool for delegated control 

In 2018, we introduced the Data Owner Client. The Data Owner Client is an administrative tool used by designated data owners to perform specific types of data management actions These can include being notified of security changes to network folders storing sensitive or confidential data, viewing reports, and when authorized to do so, disabling and enabling a policy. Additionally, data owners can import and initiate remediation actions via File Dynamics Workload policies. In 2023, with the introduction of a new web framework, we launched a web service version of the Data Owner Client.  

Supporting policy enforcement and security 

Network administrators assign individuals as data owners when they create the following types of File Dynamics policies: 

• Security Notification policies 

• Security Lockdown policies 

• Security Fencing policies 

• Workload policies 

An assigned data owner for a security policy is notified via email whenever:  

• A new user is enabled access to the network folder secured through that policy 

• The access permissions of any user having access to that network folder are modified 

• The baseline permissions established for the network folder have been modified 

Empowering the security of sensitive information 

A data owner assigned to a workload policy can perform work processes initiated from other applications. For example, OpenText File Reporter generates reports that specify the location of sensitive files can be imported into the Data Owner Client. Here, a designated data owner can remediate the location of these sensitive files. This empowers organizations to provide automated network file system security remediation approved by a gatekeeper familiar with the files. 

Delivering security and efficiency 

As organizations’ IT departments struggle to address an ever-growing set of administrative tasks, it’s reassuring to know that OpenText has introduced the ability to disperse some of these data management responsibilities to data owners. These are the individuals who understand the data, its value, and its sensitivity. 

Learn more about OpenText data governance solutions.  

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