Data is Valuable—but It’s Also Vulnerable
Did you know that 93% of organizations experienced two or more identity-related breaches in 2024? That’s a huge red flag. It’s clear that businesses need to step up their game when it comes to managing data—and the solution lies in data stewardship with a strong focus on security.
What is Data Stewardship?
Think of data stewardship as the responsible management of your organization’s data. But here’s the thing: it’s not just about keeping things organized. At its heart, it’s about securing that data. Data stewards are the unsung heroes, ensuring your data is accurate, accessible, and—most importantly—safe.
They’re the ones who set up the advanced security measures, like encryption, strong access controls, and employee training, to protect data from malicious attacks or accidental leaks. The result? Trust. By putting security first, stewards help businesses build and keep the trust of customers, partners, and employees alike.
In short, data stewardship isn’t just about managing data—it’s about making sure it stays safe, especially when handling sensitive customer information.
What is Data Security?
At its core, data security means protecting your digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft. It’s a combination of tools, processes, and policies to keep your data safe—whether it’s online, in storage, or being processed.
When you’re collecting data through web forms, data security becomes even more important. It ensures that user information stays protected and that your business remains compliant with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
How Data Security and Stewardship Work Together
Here’s the thing: data security isn’t just one piece of data stewardship—it’s the foundation. While data stewards focus on overall data management, security is always a top priority. It’s what protects your organization’s reputation, secures customer trust, and reduces the risk of costly data breaches.
Data security and stewardship aren’t separate goals; they’re intertwined. The stronger your security, the more effective your data stewardship will be.
The Five Tenets of Data Stewardship
Data stewardship rests on five key principles: lawfulness, fairness, transparency, relevancy, and security. While all are crucial, security is the most immediate and impactful in making sure your data practices are trustworthy and ethical.
Security isn’t a side note—it’s at the heart of every good data stewardship practice, from your privacy policies and procedures to team training and vendor partnerships.
What Does Good Data Stewardship and Security Look Like?
When you practice good data stewardship and security, you’re doing things like:
- Following all the data privacy regulations relevant to your organization
- Restricting data access only to the people who really need it
- Collecting only the necessary data and deleting it when it’s no longer needed
- Regularly training your team on security best practices
- Partnering with third-party vendors who also take security seriously
How FormAssembly Helps You Promote Data Security
When it comes to collecting personal data, we know there’s always some level of risk involved. But that’s where data stewardship comes in—it helps you minimize the risk by improving security, limiting vulnerabilities, and keeping your team up to speed.
At FormAssembly, we’re fully committed to helping you collect data securely, which is why we’ve built our platform with the most robust security and compliance standards out there. We follow national and international data privacy laws—think HIPAA, GDPR, GLBA, and more. Plus, we’re PCI DSS Level 1 Certified, SOC 2 Type 2 certified, and FedRAMP Ready. That means your customers can trust that their data is in safe hands with you—and with us.
Learn More
Curious to learn more about data security and how good data stewardship can protect your organization? Download our eBook, 5 Steps to Implement Data Stewardship at Your Organization, and start taking your data practices to the next level.