Collibra and Data X-Ray: A Powerful Combination for Unstructured Data Governance

The integration of Collibra and Data X-Ray represents a significant leap forward in allowing unstructured data in Collibra at scale. By combining the strengths of both platforms, organizations can establish a robust and comprehensive data governance framework for unstructured data that empowers them to make better decisions, ensure data quality and compliance, and unlock the full potential of their data assets.

In today's fast-paced world driven by data, it's crucial to stay ahead of the curve. With the explosive growth of unstructured data, organizations are struggling to make sense of it all. For this reason, Collibra and Data X-Ray have come together to provide a comprehensive solution for managing and governing enterprise-wide data.

Collibra offers a centralized and collaborative environment that empowers organizations to understand, manage, and trust their structured data. And now, when you combine that with Data X-Ray's advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques that automatically pipe in and keep unstructured data up to date within Collibra Data Catalog, the possibilities are endless. You gain unparalleled capabilities in analyzing unstructured data, uncovering valuable insights into data usage patterns, automatically identifying sensitive information, and proactively mitigating risks.

In this article, we'll dive deep into the features of Collibra and Data X-Ray. We'll explore the numerous benefits they bring to the table and, most importantly, how their integration tackles the complex challenges of data governance and compliance.

What is Collibra?

Collibra offers a centralized and collaborative environment for data governance activities, enabling businesses to establish data policies, ensure data quality, and meet regulatory requirements. With Collibra, organizations gain a holistic view of their data landscape, laying a strong foundation for data-driven decision-making.

Key features of Collibra include the ability to define and implement comprehensive data governance frameworks, ensuring consistent and policy-driven data management. It also provides data lineage and validation capabilities, improving data quality and enabling accurate reporting and analysis. The platform facilitates data discovery and lineage tracking, enhancing transparency and accountability.

What is Data X-Ray?

Data X-Ray is a powerful file discovery, classification, and monitoring tool that enhances data governance capabilities for unstructured data. It automatically identifies files containing business critical and sensitive data, assesses risk, provides insights into data usage patterns, and automates data discovery and classification. With Data X-Ray, organizations can strengthen data governance, prioritize data protection, and streamline data management processes.

One of the key features of Data X-Ray is its ability to identify sensitive data types, including personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, and intellectual property (IP). Once identified, this information can be appropriately classified and protected, ensuring compliance and data security.

Furthermore, Data X-Ray provides valuable insights into data usage patterns within an organization. Fostering collaboration among data stewards, users, and stakeholders, Data X-Ray helps improve data governance practices and enables better decision-making when it comes to data management.

Unstructured data in Collibra Data Catalog

Collibra Data Catalog serves as a powerful tool for managing and comprehending data assets. However, until now populating unstructured data in Data Catalog was a completely manual process. Identifying and classifying sensitive data was a time-consuming and error-prone process. Furthermore, tracking data lineage and usage was difficult as unstructured data could change at any second, making it challenging to understand data utilization and identify potential risks.

Data X-Ray automates the process of file discovery and classification, saving time and minimizing the risk of errors. Additionally, Data X-Ray offers insights into data lineage and usage, enabling organizations to identify potential risks and enhance their data governance practices. Moreover, Data X-Ray excels at identifying sensitive data, facilitating the protection of sensitive information and ensuring compliance with relevant regulations. By leveraging Data X-Ray alongside Collibra Data Catalog, organizations can strengthen their data management and governance capabilities.

Understanding the Technical Details of the Integration

Data X-Ray provides a completely native connection and integration to Collibra Data Catalog. Simply set up a service account user in Data Catalog and provide the credentials to Data X-Ray and any datasource in Data X-Ray you choose can be automatically synced over with all relevant metadata about the files in the datasource.

This technical integration optimizes efficiency by promoting a real-time and up-to-date view of the organization's data landscape. With a unified approach to data governance, organizations can make informed, data-driven decisions with confidence.

Advantages of Using Data X-Ray with Collibra Data Catalog

Expanding data reach to cover unstructured data

Data X-Ray discovers and classifies unstructured data from diverse sources, both on-premises and cloud environments, including:

• File shares
• Email attachments
• Content management systems
• Cloud storage
• Social media
• And more

More accurate and comprehensive data classification

Data X-Ray analyzes a wide variety of file types with contextual classification, enabling organizations to implement precise governance and compliance measures. It leverages contextual cues for enhanced file activity, security, and privacy monitoring with unparalleled precision and efficiency across various file types, including:

• Text files
• Image files
• Audio files
• Video files
• Compressed files

Automatically ingest metadata from files and unstructured data into Collibra

Data X-Ray seamlessly integrates discovered and classified data into Collibra Data Catalog, enabling automatic ingestion of metadata. This integration offers a range of benefits, allowing you to:

• Track file lineage: Gain accurate and comprehensive insights into the lifecycle of data, facilitating better tracking and understanding of data flow.
  
• Apply rules and policies: Implement governance rules and policies to track data lifecycle, identify potential risks, and ensure compliant data usage.
• Sync with physical data assets: Store information about the location, schema, and data types of physical data assets, ensuring synchronization between Data Catalog and the actual data.
• Standardize data descriptions: Enable standardized metadata descriptions for different data assets, making it easier to compare, contrast, and locate relevant data.
• Assess data risk: Prioritize data protection efforts and develop risk mitigation strategies by evaluating data risk factors. Protect sensitive data to prevent financial losses, regulatory fines, and other negative consequences.
• Create data maps: Generate data maps for compliance with data privacy regulations and maintain Records of Processing Activities (ROPAs) as required.
• Ensure regulatory compliance: Effectively manage and govern data to comply with various regulations, including those related to data privacy and security.

The combined power of Data X-Ray and Collibra Data Catalog significantly enhances enterprise-wide data governance capabilities, enabling organizations to effectively manage, protect, and utilize their data assets.