Data protection has become a strategic security issue, not only because of the exponential growth of data within organizations, but also due to the colossal costs incurred by cyberattacks targeting this data. In 2024, the average cost of a data breach was approximately $4.45 million*, a figure that continues to rise with the increasing sophistication of attacks and the growing value of corporate information assets.
Beyond direct financial losses, these incidents can cause severe reputational damage, heavy regulatory penalties (notably under the GDPR in Europe), and major operational disruptions. In this context, data governance has become an essential link in cybersecurity, as it is impossible to effectively protect what you do not fully understand.
Yet, one essential tool remains largely underused in protection systems: the data catalog.
A true centralized platform, it leverages a rich set of metadata to provide full visibility over an organization’s information assets. It answers critical questions such as: where is sensitive data stored? Who has access to it? How critical is it? Is it subject to regulatory requirements?
By fully integrating the data catalog into a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, organizations strengthen their transparency, traceability, and agility, enhancing their cyber-resilience against growing digital threats.
*Source : rapport IBM/Ponemon Institute
Mastering Information Assets: an essential step in any cybersecurity strategy
This knowledge is based on the precise identification of the data held by the organization, particularly regarding their sensitivity and regulatory compliance. Data security can only be effective if there is a clear, shared, and comprehensive map of information assets, supported by a rigorous assessment of their nature and use.
In this context, data catalogs provide an essential tool, as these platforms centralize, document, and qualify an organization’s data. They rely on metadata to enable better understanding, use, and control of data. Metadata therefore plays a central role, structuring the catalog around three key pillars, each based on different types of metadata, thus providing complementary tools for IT risk management.
Business Glossary
(based on descriptive and business metadata)
Identifies and defines, in a standardized manner, the concepts and terms used within the organization to enable a shared understanding of data between business teams and IT.
- Benefits for IT Risk Management
- Strengthens visibility over sensitive data (financial, industrial, personal, etc.)
- Improves incident and audit response times and accuracy
Data Lineage
(based on structural and administrative metadata)
Describes the complete data lifecycle—from creation to consumption—through a technical map of flows, transformations, and storage. Details sources, processing, and data destinations.
- Benefits for IT Risk Management
- Facilitates audit-related data flow mapping
- Optimises security strategies and enables prioritisation of actions in the event of an incident or cyberattack
- Facilitates identification of data access approval rules and compliance with retention rules
- Optimises access controls in line with security policies (RBAC, ABAC, fine-grained access control)
Governance
(based on governance metadata and the previous types)
Defines roles and responsibilities in data management and identifies sensitive and critical data across strategic, regulatory, security, and financial domains.
Provides guidance on classification, quality, compliance, and access.
- Benefits for IT Risk Management
- Optimizes cybersecurity strategies based on data sensitivity
- Supports automated classification and labelling
- Accelerates incident response
- Strengthens access control by sensitivity level
How to manage data access?
The catalogue, based on administrative and governance metadata, enables the implementation of various security use cases around data management:
Data Access Authorisation
This use case identifies precisely who can access which data, in which contexts and under what conditions. Such granularity enables the implementation of appropriate access approval mechanisms, particularly in complex environments where critical data is spread across multiple systems and applications.
For example, it becomes possible to integrate the catalogue with Identity and Access Management (IAM) repositories, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions or compliance tools in order to automate and secure authorisation processes.
However, this approach faces several challenges:
- Updating and synchronising catalogue metadata is complicated by the distribution of critical data across multiple systems, cloud platforms, databases and business applications.
- The data validation and approval process is difficult to maintain in order to strike a balance between ease of use and security.
Fine-grained data access management
The data catalog provides a solid foundation for managing fine-grained access control mechanisms, where its metadata granularity supports dynamic, differentiated access policies aligned with data criticality and operational context. For example, fine-grained access management enables the implementation of complex access management mechanisms for viewing (row access control, column access control, etc.) or ABAC-type access management (ability to view data in certain business contexts only).
However, implementing these fine-grained access control mechanisms requires strong governance and tight coordination between business, IT, and security teams to establish a common framework for sensitivity levels and access rules. The data catalog then becomes a living tool at the heart of governance, ensuring consistency, traceability, and adaptability of security policies amid evolving data landscapes and threats.
Complex and advanced security mechanisms
Data Catalog and DLP Integration
As a comprehensive, structured metadata repository, the data catalog can serve as a foundation for Data Loss Prevention (DLP) strategies.
Indeed, fine knowledge of data—its location, classification, lifecycle, and business use— enables the configuration of highly targeted DLP rules tailored to the specific contexts of the organisation.
When integrated with the catalogue, DLP solutions can automatically detect, block, or encrypt unauthorized transfers of sensitive data, both internally and externally.
Data Catalog and Cloud Integration
By providing greater visibility into processed data, the catalog enables the implementation of advanced cloud security strategies. As such, it is possible to implement monitoring to identify confidential data hosted in the public cloud and to require that all these environments be subject to enhanced security rules (perimeter security, encryption, data anonymisation, etc.) that are adapted to the confidentiality of the stored data.
LLM and Data Catalog
The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) offers new opportunities for data governance and data security, especially when integrated with data catalogs.
By leveraging structured metadata with the catalog, LLMs can facilitate the automatic identification of sensitive data and thus anticipate risky uses (e.g. leakage of confidential information).
However, such integrations raise challenges and must be part of a rigorous risk analysis approach combining governance, ethics and security.
Willing supports the integration of the data catalogue into cybersecurity strategies
At Willing, we believe that data catalogs are becoming a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity strategies.
By fully integrating them into a comprehensive governance approach, organisations can not only better protect their assets, but also enhance agility, compliance, and trust.
That is why we support organizations in integrating data catalogs into their cybersecurity strategy, not only by providing a better understanding of your data and use cases for securing metadata, but also by designing catalogs around the security issue, which makes all the difference.
Aware that this approach involves a profound organisational and technological transformation, Willing offers tailor-made support structured in several stages:
- Cross-evaluation of data maturity and security
- Support for catalogue integration
- Catalog enrichment, identifying business objects and defining clear classification and security policies aligned with business and regulatory requirements
- Training and acculturation of teams to ensure sustainable adoption.
- Continuous monitoring via governance committees, KPIs and regular audits, ensuring that the catalogue remains a living tool, central to the control, protection and resilience of sensitive data.
Our global approach enables organisations to gain agility, compliance, and confidence in an increasingly complex digital landscape.