Clear Ownership, Strong Controls, Trusted Data — With Evidence
Data Governance makes data discoverable, usable, secure, and compliant—so teams ship faster with fewer surprises and auditors get proof on demand.
SolveForce implements governance as a system across catalog, lineage, quality, privacy, contracts, access, and retention—wired to Zero Trust, DLP, and SIEM/SOAR—from streaming to warehouse to AI.
Connective tissue:
🧠 AI & RAG → /solveforce-ai • 📚 Standardization → /ai-knowledge-standardization
🏛️ Warehouse/Lake → /data-warehouse • 🔄 Pipelines → /etl-elt
🔐 Privacy & egress → /dlp • 🔑 Keys → /key-management • 🗝️ Secrets → /secrets-management • 🔒 Crypto → /encryption
👤 Identity → /iam • 🛡️ Security → /cybersecurity • 📊 Evidence/Automation → /siem-soar
☁️ Platform → /cloud • 🖧 Fabric → /networks-and-data-centers
🎯 Outcomes (Why SolveForce Governance)
- Trust at first use — clear owners, SLAs/SLOs, definitions, and lineage for every dataset.
- Less rework — data contracts and schema tests catch breakages before they ship.
- Safer by default — labels (PII/PHI/PAN/CUI), DLP, tokenization, and keys in HSM keep data lawful.
- AI-ready — curated, cited sources with access controls for guarded RAG and model pipelines.
- Evidence on demand — policy decisions, changes, and access logs exported to SIEM with WORM options.
🧭 Scope (What We Govern)
- Catalog & glossary — business definitions, owners, SLOs, classification, sensitivity, and tags.
- Lineage — column-level from source → pipeline → warehouse/lake → marts → AI features.
- Data contracts — schemas & SLAs for producers; schema registry (Avro/Protobuf/JSON) with compatibility rules.
- Quality — tests (nulls, ranges, uniqueness, PK/FK), metric parity, drift checks; break builds on critical failures.
- Access & privacy — ABAC/RBAC via IAM/SSO/MFA, labels (PII/PHI/PAN/CUI), tokenization, masking, and DLP.
- Retention & legal — records schedules, legal holds, deletion workflows, immutable archives.
- Residency & sovereignty — region-bound storage & compute, cross-border policies, routing guards.
- Streaming governance — topic taxonomy, retention/compaction, schema & PII controls, consumer ACLs.
- AI/ML governance — feature store lineage, model cards, data/label provenance, RAG “cite-or-refuse” enforcement.
- Reference/MDM — golden records, survivorship rules, match/merge, and change audit.
🧱 Building Blocks (Spelled Out)
- Catalog & Glossary-as-Code
- Terms & owners versioned in Git; PRs for changes; API-first updates; surfaced in BI and Notebooks.
- Lineage Everywhere
- Auto-capture from pipelines (dbt/Spark/Kafka/ELT), manual joins for edge tools; push to catalog and dashboards.
- Contracts & Registry
- –compatibility=BACKWARD (or stricter) on schemas; required data types/units/time zones; producer CI checks.
- Quality Gates
- Great Expectations/dbt tests at landing, transform, serve; quarantine lanes; policy-as-code denies promotion.
- Labels & Controls
- Classification tiers: Public / Internal / Confidential / Restricted + data classes (PII/PHI/PAN/CUI).
- Enforcement: dynamic masking, row/column security, tokenization, DLP egress rules. → /dlp
- Access & Identity
- SSO/MFA & groups map to catalog roles; short-lived credentials; approvals and least privilege by domain. → /iam
- Keys, Crypto, Secrets
- CMK/HSM custody (KMIP), envelope encryption, rotation/quorum; app secrets in vault, not in code.
→ /key-management • /encryption • /secrets-management - Observability & Evidence
- Freshness, lineage coverage, DQ pass rates, access decisions, PII scans; exports to SIEM/SOAR with WORM. → /siem-soar
🧰 Reference Patterns (Pick Your Fit)
A) Regulated Analytics (HIPAA/PCI/GDPR)
- Tokenize PAN/PII; PHI labeled & masked; region-bound stores; DLP egress blocks; immutable audit & backups.
B) Operational Data Products / Data Mesh
- Domain-owned tables with contracts; shared glossary; cross-domain SLAs; cost per data product tracked.
C) Streaming Governance (Kafka/Events)
- Topic naming standards, retention/compaction policies, schema registry enforced, PII redaction at edge, consumer ACLs & quotas.
D) AI & RAG Governance
- Curated sources → embeddings; label filters before ANN search; answers require citations or refusal; model cards + training data lineage.
→ /vector-databases • /solveforce-ai
E) Cross-Border & Residency
- Region sibling datasets; ETL replication rules; access broker enforces geo/tenant; legal-hold aware deletion.
📐 SLO Guardrails (Measure What Matters)
| SLO / KPI | Target (Recommended) |
|---|---|
| Freshness (curated tables) | ≤ 15–60 min (hot), per domain agreed |
| Data quality pass rate | ≥ 99% tests green per run |
| Lineage coverage (curated) | ≥ 95% column-level |
| PII/PHI labeling coverage | = 100% of new/changed datasets |
| Contract compatibility violations | = 0 in prod (blocked in CI) |
| Access decision latency (p95) | ≤ 100–300 ms |
| Subject-rights request SLA (privacy) | ≤ 30 days (or stricter by policy) |
| Evidence completeness (audits/IR) | = 100% (logs, approvals, artifacts) |
SLO breaches open tickets and trigger SOAR playbooks (rollback schema, quarantine dataset, revoke access, re-run jobs). → /siem-soar
🔒 Compliance Mapping (Examples)
- HIPAA / 42 CFR Part 2 — labels + masking, minimum necessary, immutable logs/backups, access audit.
- PCI DSS — tokenization, key custody in HSM, WAF/Bot for APIs, DLP on egress, CDE segmentation.
- GDPR/CCPA — lawful basis, residency, DSR workflows (access/erasure), data minimization.
- SOX / ISO 27001 / SOC 2 — change control, access, logging, incident & DR evidence.
- FedRAMP / CJIS / NIST 800-53/171 — AC/IA/AU/SC/CM families aligned; continuous monitoring to SIEM.
📊 Operating Model (People, Process, Tech)
- Stewards & Owners — every table has a steward (SLAs/SLOs) and a product owner (roadmap, budget).
- Policy-as-Code — tagging, access, residency, retention, and schema rules validated in CI/CD.
- Backlog & Reviews — monthly DQ/lineage reviews; quarterly privacy & residency reviews; publish wins & RCAs.
- Unit Economics — $/TB scanned, $/1k queries, $/data product; visible in FinOps. → /finops
🛠️ Implementation Blueprint (No-Surprise Rollout)
1) Define domains & protect surface — data products, sensitivity, residency; business glossary & owners.
2) Stand up catalog & lineage — connect sources/pipelines; capture column-level; publish SLOs.
3) Contracts & registry — schemas in Git + registry; CI gates for compatibility & PII scans.
4) Quality & quarantine lanes — tests at landing/transform/serve; break builds on red; auto-quarantine.
5) Access & privacy — ABAC/RBAC; masking/tokenization; DLP egress; approvals audit.
6) Retention & legal — records schedules, legal hold, deletion workflows; immutable archives.
7) Observability & SIEM — freshness/DQ/lineage/labels/decisions on dashboards; export evidence to SIEM/SOAR.
8) AI guardrails — curated sources → vector DBs; cite-or-refuse; model cards & data lineage.
9) Operate & improve — monthly SLO & privacy reviews; quarterly contract & cost reviews; publish RCAs.
✅ Pre-Engagement Checklist
- 📚 Domain list, data products, owners, SLOs & SLAs.
- 🧾 Regulatory scope (HIPAA/PCI/GDPR/etc.), residency constraints, retention schedules.
- 🧪 Testing posture (DQ tests today), schema registry needs, quarantine lanes.
- 🔐 Access model (SSO/MFA, ABAC/RBAC), masking/tokenization, DLP policies.
- 🔑 Key custody (KMS/HSM), secret posture, encryption standards.
- ☁️ Warehouse/lake platforms, pipeline tools, streaming tech, catalog/lineage stack.
- 📊 SIEM/SOAR destinations; evidence format; reporting cadence; incident playbooks.
- 💸 FinOps integration (budget guardrails, $/TB scanned).
🔄 Where Data Governance Fits (Recursive View)
1) Grammar — data rides /connectivity & /networks-and-data-centers.
2) Syntax — curated truth lives in /data-warehouse via /etl-elt.
3) Semantics — /cybersecurity + /dlp preserve privacy & integrity.
4) Pragmatics — /solveforce-ai consumes governed truth with citations and guardrails.
5) Foundation — shared language via /ai-knowledge-standardization and the Codex.
6) Map — indexed across the /solveforce-codex & /knowledge-hub.