Modern Data Governance Technologies and Their Role in Regulatory Compliance: A Study on GDPR and HIPAA

Abstract

Data governance has evolved into cornerstone of regulatory compliance in the data-driven organizations of today. Strict data privacy regulations as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as the explosive increase in volume and complexity of data make effective data governance today vitally important. These guidelines, which follow notions of openness, responsibility, and data minimization, mandate that businesses provide data security, integrity, and access. Modern tools including Apache Atlas, AWS Lake Formation, Databricks Unity Catalog, and Alation are emerging as critical solutions allowing businesses to automate metadata management, enforce access limits, trace data history, and create auditable logs. In this paper, these tools are evaluated in relation to scalability, usability, compliance, and interoperability. Although these technologies substantially simplify regulatory compliance, they are not without limits including complexity, integration problems, and cost constraints. This article tackles future developments that may change data governance, the benefits and disadvantages of this, and emphasizes in a nutshell that these tools are to be used to assure compliance. Keywords Data Governance, GDPR Compliance, HIPAA Compliance, Metadata Management, Data Lineage, Access Control, Data Privacy, Regulatory Compliance, Blockchain in Data Governance, AI in Data Governance, Privacy-Preserving Technologies, Multi-Cloud Governance, Data Security, Audit Logging, Role-Based Access Control.