We kicked off the second Data Leaders Forum of the year with a keynote focused on something that's become a top priority for every data team we talk to: turning governance from a bottleneck into a business enabler. Here's a quick recap for anyone who couldn’t attend live, and a look at what we announced for those exploring whether Secoda is right for their organization.

Governance is no longer just for compliance teams

Historically, governance initiatives often stalled due to two issues: too much setup overhead, and too little measurable ROI. Unless you were in a highly regulated industry, it was hard to justify investing the time.

But that’s changing. AI adoption has reframed governance as a prerequisite. If your data isn’t accurate, reliable, accessible, and secure, your AI output won't be either. That’s why Secoda is built on the belief that strong governance doesn’t just prevent risk, it actively improves speed, trust, and visibility across the business.

What’s new in Secoda this spring

Andrew McEwen, Secoda’s CTO and co-founder, took the stage next to introduce four major additions to our governance suite. Each one is designed to simplify the lives of data teams by making compliance and control part of their existing workflows:

Policies

Policies in Secoda allow you to define and enforce data governance standards in an automated, scalable way. Each policy specifies the resources it governs, the conditions for compliance, and the actions to take when a resource is out of alignment.

For example, you might create a policy that flags any production table with PII that does not have an assigned owner. These violations trigger smart alerts, which can notify teams or launch automations to fix issues instantly.

Policies are built to align with regulatory frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 using pre-built templates. This templated approach speeds up implementation and helps organizations apply consistent governance rules across complex data environments.

Key capabilities:

• Set and monitor policies with customizable severity levels
• Enforce conditions such as required documentation or owner assignment
• Automate remediation steps using Secoda’s automation engine
• Subscribe stakeholders to policy updates for visibility and accountability
• View violations in a dedicated “Issues” tab and address them directly

Policies also integrate with Data Quality Score (DQS), connecting governance rules with continuous quality monitoring to keep standards high across all assets.

Access requests

Instead of hopping between Slack, Jira, and your warehouse to manage permissions, users can now request access directly from within Secoda. Access Requests bring clarity and control to the permissioning process by creating a single system for requesting and granting access across your entire data stack. Users can request access from within Secoda or Slack, while admins manage and approve from a centralized interface with complete audit history.

Key capabilities:

• Request access by selecting resources and specifying duration and business purpose
• Approvers can assign roles, define access scopes, and set expiration dates
• Auto-expiring access prevents long-term permission sprawl
• Audit logs track every request, approval, and access change
• Integrates with tools like Okta and Microsoft Teams for secure, streamlined workflows

Whether it’s granting a marketing analyst temporary access to campaign performance data or letting an external consultant work within a specific schema for two weeks, Access Requests in Secoda reduce time-to-access while maintaining full security controls.

Custom roles

Custom Roles give organizations precise control over who can do what, and where, in Secoda. You can now go beyond Admin, Editor, and Viewer by designing roles tailored to specific teams, projects, or responsibilities, then assigning those roles at scale.

Each role defines permissions across four areas: user management, resource access, feature access, and workspace settings. You can also apply filters to scope resource access down to a specific schema, tag, or team.

Common use cases include:

• A Data Engineering team that manages monitors and pipelines but has read-only access to business datasets
• A Finance department with full access to financial schemas and view-only rights elsewhere
• A Consulting team with access restricted to the External group and no admin capabilities
• An Analyst persona that can edit dashboards and glossaries but not integrations or settings
  
  

The impersonation feature lets you preview what users with each role will see and be able to do. Roles also sync with identity providers like Okta, ensuring governance policies stay aligned with your org chart.

Logs and version history

We’ve expanded logging in Secoda to give teams full insight into changes happening across their workspace. Every update, whether automated or manual, is now tracked at the resource level. You can filter activity by user, date, action type, and affected asset.

More importantly, every resource now includes version history. That means you can restore metadata to a previous state with a single click, whether you’re recovering from an accidental change or validating changes during an audit.

What you can do with Logs and Version History:

• View activity logs for every resource or across the full workspace
• Restore tables, glossary terms, documents, or monitors to previous versions
• Compare versions side by side to see what changed and when
• Track user activity via profile logs for better oversight
• Maintain compliance with full audit trails for reviews or certifications
  
  

Admins can also monitor workspace-level logs directly from the settings panel, with expanded filtering options for authentication events, metadata updates, and more.

All of these features are currently in early access. Reach out to your CSM or Secoda contact to test them out.

What data leaders are saying about governance today

During the keynote, we were also joined by Parag Shah (VP of Data, CarGurus) and Kryztof Urban (Head of Data, Lichtblick), who shared how their teams are approaching governance with Secoda.

Across industries and team structures, four themes emerged:

1. Governance only works when it's embedded in workflows

Leaders consistently emphasized that governance shouldn’t feel like a separate process. Automating ownership assignment, verifying documentation through scoring, and integrating access requests into Slack or Teams makes it easier to keep standards high without requiring separate tools or overhead.

2. You can’t manage access or trust without visibility

Understanding who has access to what is still a challenge for many teams. Being able to see privileges across roles, manage requests in one place, and audit changes retroactively is now seen as table stakes, not just for compliance, but for peace of mind.

3. Adoption starts with context and clarity

Whether it's tagging ownership, using business-friendly terms in a glossary, or creating a shared language across departments, context is what drives adoption. Governance leaders are focused on making it easier for teams to understand their data, not just store it.

4. Data quality and documentation power better AI

Improved documentation and ownership are no longer “nice to have.” They’re prerequisites for enabling reliable AI. AI models can’t interpret column names without context. Leaders are increasingly connecting governance work to AI performance and democratized access.

These themes reinforce a broader trend. Governance isn’t about control for its own sake. It’s about enabling speed, clarity, and confidence, especially as more teams build AI-powered workflows on top of their data.

The path forward

Governance can start as a defensive strategy, but its real value shows up when it becomes a way to accelerate decision-making, increase trust, and reduce time spent chasing context.

By combining data quality, cataloging, permissions, and observability into one platform, Secoda helps organizations shift from fragmented governance to unified, AI-ready systems. And with customers already seeing measurable impact, from reduced manual requests to stronger AI results, it’s clear that the governance conversation is just getting started.

If you're exploring how to simplify governance or make your data more searchable, secure, and reliable, we’d love to show you how these updates work in action. Reach out to our team here.