Data governance
The policies, roles and processes that define who owns data, how it is classified, who may access it, how long it is kept and how its quality is maintained.
Data governance is the management side of an IoT data strategy. It decides which data is personal, which is confidential, which is operational, and sets rules for each: encryption, access rights, data retention and sharing with partners. It also owns data quality, which in IoT means tracking calibration, units and metadata so readings stay interpretable.
It matters because connected products collect far more than their creators intended to use. A thermostat reveals occupancy, a vehicle tracker reveals a driver’s routine. Governance makes those implications explicit and avoids the two common failures: a data lake nobody can explain, and a privacy incident nobody saw coming. Regulations on data sovereignty and product security increasingly require it in writing.
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