{"id":12951,"date":"2022-03-28T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=12951"},"modified":"2025-06-13T23:14:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T06:14:55","slug":"simplifying-data-governance-with-couchbase-mobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/simplifying-data-governance-with-couchbase-mobile\/","title":{"rendered":"Simplifying Data Governance with Couchbase Mobile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matching the needs of data governance with complex data management policies can be a daunting undertaking for enterprises. In this post, we demonstrate Couchbase Mobile’s ability to help implement enterprise data retention policies.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Data Governance?<\/span><\/h4>\n

According to <\/span>NIST<\/span><\/a>, Data Governance is \u201c<\/span>A set of processes that ensures that data assets are formally managed throughout the enterprise. A data governance model establishes authority and management and decision making parameters related to the data produced or managed by the enterprise<\/span><\/i>\u201d. In other words, data governance is a core element of data management and encompasses aspects of data privacy and security, integrity, consistency and usability. At a macro level, data governance policies control the flow of data across international borders. That\u2019s a lot to chew on!<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, data governance has a vast purview. Data management scenarios are even more complex when managing <\/span>distributed <\/span><\/i>islands of data storage. In this post, we focus on a critical aspect of data governance related to the enforcement of data retention policies and show how <\/span>Couchbase Mobile 3<\/span><\/a> facilitates the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Couchbase Mobile addresses several other data governance requirements such as data security and privacy to ensure that only authorized users have <\/span>access<\/span><\/a> to the relevant subset of data and that sensitive data <\/span>never leaves the edge<\/span><\/a>. Those aspects are not discussed in this post.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sync Gateway access control model<\/span><\/h4>\n

First, here is a quick primer on how Couchbase Sync Gateway access control works.<\/span><\/p>\n

Granting Document Access<\/span><\/h5>\n

Every document in the system may be assigned to one or more <\/span>channels<\/b>. These channels can be user-defined or system-defined. Think of a channel as a <\/span>tag<\/span><\/i> associated with a document. A channel can have any number of documents, and an application can share a document across multiple channels.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Couchbase<\/a><\/p>\n

A user, or a role, is a logical collection of users granted access to a channel. When gaining access to a channel, a user (or a role) is granted access to documents in the channel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the context of Couchbase Mobile, a <\/span>user<\/i><\/b> can be associated with an individual application user, a device, a store, a factory, a cruise ship, etc. It’s essentially the endpoint to which the data is synced.<\/span><\/p>\n

A user can have access to multiple channels and multiple users can share a channel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Revoking document access<\/span><\/h5>\n

\"Couchbase<\/a><\/p>\n

A user can lose access to a document in two ways:<\/span><\/p>\n