Qohash on why data governance is now central to reducing business risk, in Le Figaro

On October 30, 2026, Le Figaro published Qohash : la gouvernance des données au cœur de la réduction des risques en entreprise, a partner feature produced by Le Figaro. In it, Guy Veilleux, Qohash’s SVP Europe, explains why data governance now shapes how organizations manage risk, stay competitive and keep the trust of their customers.

This summer, the French tax administration had data on 678,000 taxpayers viewed or extracted through unauthorized access. Attackers are better organized than ever, and the article argues that the question is no longer just how to close the doors. It is knowing what you’re protecting, and what losing it would cost.

You can’t control what you can’t see

Guy says most organizations he meets have the same problem:

“You can’t control what you can’t see. In many of the organizations I meet, the finding is the same: they have no real control over their sensitive information, because they lack visibility.”

“Agentic AI, more organized attackers and geopolitical tension in Europe and Canada all make that blind spot more costly. Guy argues that data governance turns “diffuse exposure into an identified, prioritized and measurable risk. It’s no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a prerequisite.”

The end of “security by obscurity”

Guy names three risks of poorly governed data: internal overexposure, leaks, and data kept long after it stopped being useful. He also points to a quieter change:

“For a long time, companies benefited from a kind of ‘security by obscurity’: confidential documents lay dormant in shared folders, poorly protected but hard to find. That implicit protection is disappearing.”

“Internal search engines, collaboration tools and AI assistants now make that forgotten data easy to find and use.

Security and performance aren’t a trade-off

“An organization that can’t see its data can only choose between blocking everything and letting everything through. An organization that knows its data can decide quickly, and decide correctly.”

“Guy stresses that governance has to be continuous: a one-time audit is out of date within a few weeks.”

Digital sovereignty starts with knowing your data

GDPR, the EU AI Act and Quebec’s Law 25 are raising the bar for data protection. Guy argues that sovereignty is about more than choosing a vendor or an infrastructure. It “starts with the ability to identify precisely what information you hold, and to decide which of it must remain under local control.”

How Qohash answers the challenge

The article covers how the Qostodian platform brings security to where the data lives, without exporting, copying or moving it:

• Qostodian continuously discovers, classifies and monitors structured and unstructured data across file servers, endpoints and collaboration platforms. It can act at the source by quarantining files, applying classification labels or running automated remediation.
• Qostodian Recon is built for the most sensitive environments. It needs no agents, makes no cloud copies and can run on air-gapped networks. It analyzes more than 350 file types, including images, against Canadian, US and European regulations, and its audit trail can be sent to your SIEM.
• Qostodian Nexus, Qohash’s newest solution, inspects AI prompts, uploaded files, tool calls and responses in real time. Depending on the rules you set, it allows the exchange, masks sensitive information or blocks the request before it reaches the model.

Guy closes with this:

“Our conviction is that security should not be a brake on innovation. On the contrary, it’s by taking back control of their data that organizations can adopt artificial intelligence with confidence.”

Read the full article on Le Figaro →