What is data platform auditing?
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Definition of data platform auditing
Data platform auditing reviews your data platform against fitness for purpose measures such as security, compliance and structure.
Executive view
Your organisation’s data platform should be a central hub that is secure, efficient and flexible enough to suit your organisation’s growing and changing needs. Data platform auditing is needed to ensure that your data platform meets these needs and is set up correctly so that your teams can use it to meet strategic goals.
Data platform auditing helps businesses:
ensure compliance and protect assets and data, by reviewing and improving the security of your data platform.
reduce costs by reviewing and improving the structure of your data platform.
Business function leader view
Data platform auditing helps teams reduce instances of data loss, data corruption, data inaccuracies and data security on their data platform. Improvements can be made to the design of the data platform to ensure that data storage and structure is consistent and that relationships are clearly defined, which reduces instances of duplication and decreases storage costs. The data platform performance can also be improved to improve the speed of data access. Improving the security of the data platform will ensure compliance and reduce the risk of data loss and corruption.
You may need this service if:
your team experiences problems of data duplication, corruption or loss.
you have a large volume of data on your data platform and do not have security measures in place.
your team is using a data platform to gain insights that drive decision-making.
KPIs you should consider measuring for this are:
reduced downtime
increased speed of data availability
costs saved by reducing unnecessary load
reduced costs associated with data loss and corruption
Technical view
When implementing data science and AI solutions in your products, the availability, security and accuracy of your data are essential. Reviewing and improving your data platform will improve the performance of your projects and make development smoother and more efficient.
Data platform auditing helps deliver:
improved data security and compliance
faster page loads
faster interactive applications
user retention
reduced bounced rate
faster access to data for analysis
Get this service if you encounter:
slow performance of web pages and applications.
increasing server resource charges.
high bounce rates.
inadequate data security measures or noncompliance.
Key criteria to consider are:
The cost of improvements compared to benefits from those improvements.
Data security.
GDPR.
Any potentially unneeded data.
Data platform auditing in metals manufacturing
For a metals manufacturer, the data platform is where traceability lives. Every heat number, mill certificate, cutting plan, and delivery record depends on that platform being structured correctly and staying available. An audit for a manufacturer looks a little different from a generic web application audit — the questions worth asking include:
- Is the traceability chain intact? Can every certificate be traced from goods-in through cutting to the specific delivery it accompanies, without gaps? A structural audit should specifically check for orphaned records — inventory items with no linked certificate, or certificates with no linked stock.
- Is historical data recoverable? If a customer or auditor asks about a delivery from two years ago, can the platform produce the original certificate and the full chain of custody, or has that link degraded over time (data archived without its relationships, or systems migrated without preserving links)?
- Who can access and change certified data? Certificate and traceability data should be effectively immutable once issued — an audit should confirm that access controls prevent casual editing of records that carry compliance weight.
Manufacturers that treat their data platform audit as a compliance exercise, rather than only a technical one, tend to get more value from it — the output isn’t just “here’s what’s insecure”, it’s “here’s what would happen if a customer or regulator asked us to prove where this batch of steel came from, and here’s where that proof would fail.”