Data Custodian

If the Data Owner decides and the Data Steward looks after meaning and quality, the Data Custodian handles the technical side: where data is stored, how it is backed up, who has system access, how it is encrypted and when it is deleted.

They do not decide who should see the data: they apply what the Data Owner has approved. It is usually an IT, systems or data platform person or team, and in many companies the role is covered by the database administrator or the cloud provider under internal supervision.

Separating these three roles avoids the most common data governance mistake: letting IT decide on business data, or business asking for technical changes nobody carries out securely.