The vice president of human resources decides that payroll records are confidential and approves who may read them, while the IT storage team configures the backups, encryption and access permissions she approved. Which roles do the vice president and the storage team hold, in that order?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
One decides, the other does. The owner's the senior person who's accountable and calls the shots on classification and access; the custodian's the hands-on team that carries those decisions out. If you flip them, you've got IT deciding who reads payroll, and that's the trap.
Full Explanation
The data owner is a senior business stakeholder who is accountable for a dataset: deciding its classification, approving who may access it and setting protection requirements. The vice president of human resources classifying payroll as confidential and approving readers is acting squarely in that role. The data custodian implements and maintains the controls the owner specifies, such as backups, encryption and permission configuration, which is what the IT storage team does. Reversing the roles would make IT accountable for business decisions about payroll access, which is not how accountability is assigned. A data steward focuses on data quality, definitions and metadata rather than classification authority, and a data controller is a privacy-law role for the organization that determines the purposes and means of processing personal data, not an internal storage team. Processor and subprocessor are likewise privacy roles describing outside parties that process personal data on a controller's behalf; they do not describe an internal executive and an internal IT team. Exam caveat: owner is about accountability and decisions, custodian is about day-to-day implementation, and the same person can hold different roles for different datasets. Operational check: confirm the data inventory names the vice president as owner for payroll, and verify that the storage team's permission changes trace back to her documented approvals.