Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with David Gibson, VP of Marketing at Varonis (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: There is a lot of data out there that is not organized with the right metadata for that particular function – whatever that function may be. In your case, it is access control and IT governance. In somebody else’s case, it is customer data related to recommendation engines. Whatever is the business logic of it, to be able to do this right, you need to understand the business function really well. IT is a business function as well.

David Gibson: I would even extend it to collaboration as a function. It is hard to understand collaboration if you don’t know who is collaborating with whom, what the data is, and what it contains.

SM: But it is about the workflow of the business. What is the business trying to accomplish? What are the objectives of the business? Once you answer those questions, you take it from there on to what kind of metadata organization you need. Then you need to run all the business logic on top of that.

Your point is well taken: that the big area where there is a lot of work going on right now in data analytics and machine learning is in that organization. Understanding the business logic, the business workflow, the metadata that can drive business logic and heuristics, and then the heuristics themselves. That is what I am seeing, and this conversation reinforces my observation.

DG: If you think about all the different data types, it is a lot of work to organize it.

SM: How to run a port, for example, has its own business logic. It has its own workflow, data, metadata requirements, and its own heuristics.

DG: One thing I would add is that a lot of these organizations create a ton of files and e-mails every day. The rhythm and the needs of collaboration seem to be almost a universal thing. People need access to a lot of data, and when they need it, they want it very quickly. That data is valuable, and they need to make sure they can share it safely. Even when you can see who is collaborating with whom and about what, whatever business you are in, you can take interesting insights. There are interesting possibilities there, and we are very excited about them.

SM: Thank you, David.

DG: Thank you.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with David Gibson, VP of Marketing at Varonis
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