(US & Canada) Sudip Ghose, VP, Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI at Equifax, speaks with Dennis Allen, Director – Security Programs, Strategy, and Risk at Stratascale, in a video interview about his role, how internal and external data analytics relate to organizational work, enabling technologies, having a solid security and governance framework, and the skills required to manage the technologies.

Equifax Inc. is an American multinational consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

As the VP of Enterprise Data, and Analytics, Ghose provides internal Equifax stakeholders such as the CFO, CMO, HR, and revenue leaders with the right data to operate. He manages the entire data ecosystem, which starts with getting data from the various internal applications and sources, eventually connecting those to a centralized data lake powered by Google Cloud Platform.

Speaking of day-to-day activities, he mentions building the data pipelines and developing consumable data products through BI tools like Tableau and Looker.

Further, Ghose mentions that the firm has started its AI journey and uses Vertex AI Agent Builder. In addition, the company is also enabling certain AI features that can fuel data self-service and agentive AI.

When asked how internal and external data analytics relate to the Equifax workflow, he states that being a data technology business, much of the data used is external. Data external to the organization is brought in, processed, and linked for customers which are the big banks, mortgage companies, and the government.

The core of the business is managing the data supply chain, ensuring good data quality, and meeting data protection and access requirements while serving customers external to Equifax. When it comes to internal data analytics, he mentions having a massive analytic ecosystem utilized by internal analysts, from financial services to revenue analysts and sales leaders.

Emphasizing the enabling technologies, Ghose shares how the organization has undergone significant transformation in managing the data systems. He mentions consolidating the disparate data systems into a centralized data lake or lake warehouse.

This standardization of the architecture was done using three to four key frameworks that enabled the company to pull data seamlessly from multiple sources, be it a SaaS platform, an AWS-powered platform, or internal systems.

By doing that, Equifax has been able to quickly produce the analytic insights from the data and deliver those to customers in need, says Ghose. The goal is to reduce the time to market, he adds.

The centralized team led by Ghose has data and cloud engineering experts who maintain the system and ensure a reliable experience. This has led to an impressive achievement of 99.999% uptime across the entire data pipeline and analytics, he says.

Over time, Equifax has delivered the best disaster recovery or blue-green architecture in Google Cloud, providing high reliability, availability, consistency, and quality of data experience, says Ghose.

Moving forward, he sheds light on the solid security framework at Equifax for data protection. Delving deeper into the organizational governance framework, Ghose states that there are two sides to it — the technology and the business function. Experts from both functions collaborate with him to develop the framework.

The key aspect of the governance framework is to ensure data security and accessibility to the right people. For instance, he says, financial data is not for everybody, and similarly, sales data has a hierarchical positioning.

The organization has been able to provide people with the right dataset at the right time, with quick request turnaround using the best access framework. This has also sparked discussions about building more data products.

As the data platform serves the entire company, there has been a need for cross-functional access to data, says Ghose. Different teams require access to the other team’s data for insights or analysis. Likewise, regulatory teams also seek access to specific data sets, he adds.

Equifax has created an environment where the journey from idea to execution is remarkably short, and Ghose takes pride in that. He states that this achievement has been made possible through the implementation of a solid governance framework and establishing of rigor with business and functional leaders within the ecosystem.

Highlighting critical skills required to manage technologies, Ghose mentions having multiple squads with varied capabilities. For instance, he refers to the ingestion team that requires data engineering skills. Then, there are site reliability or DevOps engineers distributed across the globe and platform architects who manage technologies, including Tableau and Looker.

The integration of platform and cloud architecture with a solid sense of security has allowed Equifax to swiftly transition from certain technologies, says Ghose. Furthermore, security is one aspect that is embedded in every squad, ensuring all deliverables meet the security standards.

Over the years, the company has adapted to evolving security mandates and implemented those within a short time frame. He conveys that comprehending the security aspect and evidently demonstrating that the infrastructure is secure has been critical.

In conclusion, Ghose states that Equifax now has a stable security framework, and following it meticulously has put it in a strong position, especially during mergers and acquisitions (M&A). This has also strengthened the company’s global presence across the M&As undertaken in the past three years.

CDO Magazine appreciates Sudip Ghose for sharing his insights with our global community.