KYData Governance
It is impossible to govern what you do not understand.
Our proprietary KYData (Know Your Data) methodology gives you a structured, realistic picture of the data you hold, how it flows across systems, third parties, and borders, and which controls actually apply, including marketing, analytics, and international transfers. It is the foundation everything else is built on.
What KYData Governance covers
We assess how data is governed across your organisation by testing your documentation and structures against how things actually work in practice:
- Accountability and ownership: Defining who is actually responsible for data governance decisions and where that authority sits across the business.
- End-to-end data flow mapping: Tracing how data moves across internal systems, vendors, and borders; combining formal inventories with what your teams describe on the ground.
- Data quality and classification: Establishing clear standards for categorising data sensitivity, accuracy, and lifecycle control.
- Operational and commercial visibility: Uncovering hidden data flows across core tech stacks, marketing platforms, and analytics tools.
How it works
KYData Governance is one of three KYData modules, alongside KYData Privacy and KYData Cyber Governance. A data governance gap often has privacy implications, and the data mapping KYData Governance produces informs the privacy assessment where data flows are central.
Commission KYData Governance on its own, or combine it with one or both of the other modules. Where you commission multiple modules, each runs as its own workstream, giving you genuine depth in each area, brought together at the end.
Where documentation is limited or incomplete, structured interviews will be needed; in which case an Assessment is the right starting point rather than a Snapshot. We advise before we begin.
Tiers & delivery
| Tier | What it involves | Delivered as |
|---|---|---|
| Snapshot | Rapid review of key documentation: data policies, inventories, ownership records, and governance structures. | Findings summary with prioritised recommendations. |
| Assessment | Document review plus structured interviews. A fuller picture of how data is owned, managed and governed in practice. | Report with findings and recommendations, presented to leadership. |
| Extended review | Broader scope: suited to post-incident situations, data and AI programmes, or where data governance intersects with privacy and cyber. | Detailed findings report and prioritised remediation recommendations, presented to leadership. |
| Deep dive | Comprehensive review across documentation, interviews, data lineage and flow analysis. For organisations preparing for a regulatory moment, major transaction, or a serious data governance programme. | Comprehensive report with risk assessment and remediation roadmap, presented to leadership. |
On concluding, you will know where your data is, how it is used, and who is accountable for it; and how to approach the gaps.
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