"Companies are struggling with the confusion and complexity that has emerged in the compliance and data governance market," said Austin Hill, president and CEO of Synomos. "This series of highly informative and actionable white papers and web seminars provides executives and managers with clear and valuable advice and strategies to develop cost-effective compliance, data governance and information assurance programs. If you are wondering where and how to get started, or are looking to evaluate your existing program, this series is for you."

The first white paper is authored by Patrick Sullivan, Synomos’ Senior Vice President of Policy Advisory Services. The subsequent papers in this series will focus on managing information assets for financial services, pharmaceuticals, and the public sector; other papers will focus on specific regulations and their impacts on information policy compliance.

"This paper explains why a data governance process is essential in dealing with several critical issues around data use and suggests an initial framework for evaluating data governance approaches or solutions," said Sullivan. "A comprehensive data governance program -- well integrated with corporate, IT and security governance approaches -- is the best way to ensure the appropriate balance between the maximum leveraging of data to meet business objectives, and the accountabilities, risk management and compliance requirements necessary for data protection."

The paper provides compliance, risk and privacy executives with:

• An overview of the concept and process of data governance
• The three key challenges that data-driven organizations face when working to ensure the effective use of data and information resources to meet business objectives
• An outline of how a data governance framework can bring administrative and cost efficiency to critical compliance requirements around data-policies, information handling programs, data security, and provide a framework for compliance processes supporting organizational performance.
• A snapshot of the potential consequences of the absence of data governance processes

"Data governance refers to the processes of managing decisions about information use within complex organizations in order to meet business or other organizational objectives," according to the paper. "Often articles discussing data governance center on data quality as the key objective, linking data governance specifically to attainment of business objectives, and data value to shareholder value. While data quality is indeed a central aspect of data governance, the scope of data governance should be understood as including a wider range of elements."

The paper concludes that "an appropriate data governance approach provides a comprehensive, consolidated, and consistent framework and methodology for managing multiple strategic, operational, and compliance-related processes associated with the use of information to accomplish business objectives. In particular, a well designed and constructed data governance program can bring administrative and cost efficiency to critical compliance requirements around privacy and data security, and provide a framework for compliance processes integrated with and supporting operational and organizational performance."


About Synomos Inc.
Synomos™ is the leading supplier of intelligent data policy provisioning solutions. Synomos, formerly known as the Enterprise Privacy Unit of Zero-Knowledge Systems, was spun out into a wholly owned subsidiary of ZKS in June 2004. Align™, Synomos' core product, enables organizations to effectively manage and unite the people, processes, and policies of their enterprise data supply chain to achieve compliance and risk reduction. Synomos has delivered on mandates for Fortune 500 companies, financial services organizations and global technology leaders. The company is headquartered in Montreal, Canada with offices in the Eastern United States. More information is available at http://www.synomos.com

Media Contact
Craig Silverman
Synomos Public Relations
media@synomos.com
514.808.0548