UK consumers threaten data breach backlash – Computer Weekly, 5 December 2018
“Seven out of 10 UK consumers and two-thirds, on average, around the world would stop doing business with a brand that suffers a breach of users’ financial or personal data.
Retailers are most at risk globally, with 62% of respondents willing to walk away after a data breach, followed by banks (59%) and social media sites (58%), according to a survey of 10,500 consumers by digital security firm Gemalto.”
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252453836/UK-consumers-threaten-data-breach-backlash

What Great Data Analysts Do — and Why Every Organization Needs Them – Harvard Business Review, 4 December 2018
“The top trophy hire in data science is elusive, and it’s no surprise: a “full-stack” data scientist has mastery of machine learning, statistics, and analytics. When teams can’t get their hands on a three-in-one polymath, they set their sights on luring the most impressive prize among the single-origin specialists. Which of those skills gets the pedestal?”
https://hbr.org/2018/12/what-great-data-analysts-do-and-why-every-organization-needs-them

Who steals personal data and how do they make money from it? – Sky News, 5 December 2018
“When large data sets such as these appear within the cyber criminal ecosystem, they are either sold in their entirety or broken up and sold piecemeal across forums, messaging applications and marketplaces.”
https://news.sky.com/story/who-steals-personal-data-and-how-do-they-make-money-from-it-11571453

GM Files Blockchain Patent to Manage Data From Autonomous Cars – Coin Telegraph, 3 December 2018
“GM’s application, first filed May 25, 2017, outlines a system for using blockchain to provide “secure” and “robust” data distribution and interoperable exchange between multiple automated vehicles and other entities, such as municipalities, regional authorities, and public facilities.”
https://cointelegraph.com/news/gm-files-blockchain-patent-to-manage-data-from-autonomous-cars

National Grid turns to AI to process drone data – IT Pro, 3 December 2018
“The organisation has been using six drones, made by British firm DJI, to inspect the lines around England and Wales. The drones are equipped with high-res cameras with infrared capabilities and the drones are deployed to assess the pylons, checking steelwork, wear and corrosion and damage to conductors.
With so many lines, the drones capture a lot of data and like pretty much every AI story, it’s about processing that information to save labour time.
National Grid has started using machine learning with the drone data, but it’s chief executive John Pettigrew said it was an aid rather than a human replacement.”
https://www.itpro.co.uk/machine-learning/32485/national-grid-turns-to-ai-to-process-drone-data

China’s edge in the tech race is vast amounts of data – CNBC, 30 November 2018
“Just over 1.4 billion people live in China. That’s a fifth of the world’s population and four times as many people as the United States.
A vast number of them are sharing medical records, paying for meals and accessing bank accounts through technology on a daily basis, on scale not seen in Europe or the U.S.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/30/chinas-edge-in-the-tech-race-is-vast-amounts-of-data.html

Facebook considered charging companies for access to user data – Cnet, 28 November 2018
“Facebook employees also discussed encouraging advertisers to spend more money on the service in exchange for increased access to user information, the emails in the document reportedly show. Monetizing its user data would mark a dramatic about-face of the social media giant’s longstanding policy of not selling that information.”
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-considered-charging-for-access-to-user-data/

Bluzelle chief explains the concept of data as a currency – CNBC, 28 November 2018
“If data is treated like a currency, companies like Facebook and Twitter should “almost conduct themselves like banks,” says Pavel Bains, CEO of Bluzelle.”
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/11/28/bluzelle-chief-explains-the-concept-of-data-as-a-currency.html

A modest proposal for the Open Data Institute – Financial Times, 29 November 2018
“Google, Apple and Uber have independently spent millions gathering geospatial data. This is the sort of data which might be used for driverless cars, delivery drones, security functions and other tech wonders. It is therefore of great interest to many less data-rich businesses, and indeed governments.
According to the Open Data Institute (ODI), these companies are in effect “data monopolies”, thanks to the wealth of geospatial data they have obtained on our roads, routes and travels. This is largely presented as a bad thing.
However, the ODI’s reasoning seems a little contradictory. The institute seems to be saying that big tech has too much data, and is therefore in too powerful a market position compared to smaller companies.”
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/11/29/1543471201000/A-modest-proposal-for-the-Open-Data-Institute/

The data era is shifting: From creation to storage to readiness – Information Age, 27 November 2018
“The global ‘data sphere’ could grow from 33 to 175 zettabytes by 2025, and industries such as Financial Services, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Media and Entertainment are helping to define this new era of data growth. This is according to a white paper by the IDC, sponsored by global data and storage company Seagate Technology, which has examined impending shifts to the global data model.”
https://www.information-age.com/data-era-shifting-123476838/

71% of UK businesses at risk due to data skills gap, CEOs say – TechRepublic, 26 November 2018
“Nearly three quarters (71%) of CEOs in the UK and Ireland said a shortage of data skills and lack of data access could create major issues in their business, according to a recent report from Domo. Since data access and information are booming in the enterprise, cybersecurity and data privacy became a major concern in 2018, and will likely remain so in the coming years.”
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/71-of-uk-businesses-at-risk-due-to-data-access-and-skills-gap-ceos-say/

Deploying IoT? The Trick is the Data – IoT Evolution, 26 November 2018
“In either of these examples, the IoT technology only delivers its full value when the data is properly captured and processed.  This technology produces enormous quantities of streaming data. Too many enterprises jump into IoT without even developing a plan on how they’ll handle the huge volumes of data they’ll incur –  which requires consideration for how quickly their analytics engines can derive conclusions from the data, how much network bandwidth they need to handle quantum leaps of data expeditiously, and even how and where they can store that data for post-analysis. As a result, their IoT deployments suffer bugs and perform poorly. The organizations may blame the hardware, but the blame lies in their failure to correctly process data.”
https://www.iotevolutionworld.com/m2m/articles/440406-deploying-iot-trick-the-data.htm

IBM CEO Joins Apple in Blasting Data Use by Silicon Valley – Bloomberg News, 27 November 2018
“Without naming company names, Rometty pointed to the “irresponsible handling of personal data by a few dominant consumer-facing platform companies” as the cause of a “trust crisis” between users and tech companies, according to an advanced copy of her remarks.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-26/ibm-ceo-joins-apple-in-blasting-data-use-by-silicon-valley-firms

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Issue 6 of The Business of Data newsletter has just been published. You can sign up to receive future copies by email HERE.

The Business of Data

Issue 6 (27 November 2018)

Getting value from your data under GDPR – Information Age, 15 November 2018
“Conducting data analytics in a legally compliant manner has been made significantly more complex under the GDPR and raises the question, can companies continue to innovate and make data-driven decisions while fully complying with the law?”
https://www.information-age.com/data-under-gdpr-123476524/

Algorithms tame ambiguities in use of legal data – Financial Times, 15 November 2018
““The real challenge is teaching machine learning models to understand the wording,” says Lucy Shurwood, a partner at Pinsent Masons. The law firm is developing its own artificial intelligence platform, called TermFrame, to extract, review and analyse contract risks. “Something might be worded differently but mean the same thing and sometimes one word change will fundamentally alter the meaning of the clause,””
https://www.ft.com/content/50b0eba4-d063-11e8-9a3c-5d5eac8f1ab4

Harnessing the value of NHS patient data – The Lancet, 16 November 2018
“The potential for digital technology to transform health care is well documented, but as companies race to develop the next algorithm, much of their success rests on their ability to access patient data. Use of NHS patient data in the UK is a complex issue. There are different types of data. Logistical data on patient flow, time to referral, or which clinician a patient saw are useful pieces of information that can be used to streamline processes. Detailed demographic and diagnostic data can be personal and used in a host of ways from clinical decision support systems to training machine learning algorithms. NHS data can also be disorganised, requiring careful curation to develop it into a useful format. The lack of connectivity between different parts of the NHS is widely acknowledged and means that patient data can be difficult to work with and its value—in the broadest sense of the term—is often weakened by the technological limitations of the NHS.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32942-8/fulltext

Follow the Data? Investigative Journalism in the Age of Algorithms – Singularity Hub, 18 November 2018
“In an ideal world, algorithmic decision-making would be better than that made by humans. If you don’t program your code to discriminate on the basis of age, gender, race, or sexuality, then you may think these factors shouldn’t be taken into account. In theory, the algorithms should make decisions based purely on the data, in a transparent way.
Reality, however, is not ideal; algorithms are designed by people and draw their datasets from a biased world. Hidden prejudices may lead to unintended consequences. Furthermore, overconfidence in algorithms’ performance, misinterpretation of statistics, and automated decision-making processes can make appealing these decisions extremely difficult.”
https://singularityhub.com/2018/11/18/follow-the-data-investigative-journalism-in-the-age-of-algorithms/#sm.0000qqi9mncyuepoqat2dnntnwyns

May I have a word about… football, data analysis and donkeys – The Guardian, 18 November 2018
“Manchester City are in the market for a data quality analyst, presumably to help their data insights and decision technology director. Applicants will have a “pivotal role in assisting with project work by analysing and interpreting data in relation to football players in South America. You will also be responsible for collating, inputting and profiling all player data, together with identifying and problem-solving complex data sets.””
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2018/nov/18/may-i-have-a-word-about-football-data-analysis

What If Banks Were the Main Protectors of Customers’ Private Data? – Harvard Business Review, 20 November 2018
“Maybe the best-suited institutions to manage digital data are banks. In a sense, banks are already data guardians. After all, most of the money in circulation is virtual, nothing but data. They also have a long history of being at the forefront of security methods, from the development of the vault to multi-factor authentication. Moreover, banks have experience in safeguarding privacy through their commitment to confidentiality. Finally, banks tend to have more local and personal relationships with their clients in ways that might make users feel safer than trusting their data to an international corporation. And if you’re unhappy with one bank, you can always switch to another. Banks’ business model and their experience give them a comparative advantage over other businesses to become our personal data guardians.Maybe the best-suited institutions to manage digital data are banks. In a sense, banks are already data guardians. After all, most of the money in circulation is virtual, nothing but data. They also have a long history of being at the forefront of security methods, from the development of the vault to multi-factor authentication. Moreover, banks have experience in safeguarding privacy through their commitment to confidentiality. Finally, banks tend to have more local and personal relationships with their clients in ways that might make users feel safer than trusting their data to an international corporation. And if you’re unhappy with one bank, you can always switch to another. Banks’ business model and their experience give them a comparative advantage over other businesses to become our personal data guardians.”
https://hbr.org/2018/11/what-if-banks-were-the-main-protectors-of-customers-private-data

Force Google, Apple and Uber to share mapping data, UK advised – Financial Times, 20 November 2018
“The UK government should force Google, Apple, Uber and others to share their mapping data so that other companies can develop autonomous cars, drones and transport apps, according to an influential campaign group.
The Open Data Institute, co-founded by Tim Berners-Lee at MIT and Nigel Shadbolt, artificial intelligence professor at the University of Oxford, warned on Tuesday that big tech companies had become “data monopolies”.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9e397cd6-ec1c-11e8-8180-9cf212677a57

Flawed US Postal Service API exposes data on 60 million users – IT Pro, 22 November 2018
“A significant flaw has been discovered in the website of the US Postal Service which exposed near real-time data about packages sent by commercial customers and, in some cases, allowed users to change information belonging to other account holders.”
https://www.itpro.co.uk/data-insights/32420/flawed-us-postal-service-api-exposes-data-on-60-million-users

The dos and don’ts of data – The Economist, 23 November 2018
“There is a new beast roaming the information landscape—the “data trust”—though exactly what this means is still an open question. Is it a legal entity like a financial trust, with a fiduciary? Or something less elaborate, and less tested in the courts?”
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/11/23/the-dos-and-donts-of-data

Data aggregator leaks 9.3m people’s personal information – IT Pro, 23 November 2018
“The latest data exposure comes courtesy of Adapt.io, a company which offers sales and marketing professionals access to a database of (according to the company’s website) 37 million business contacts, including 2.7 million C-level and 3.8 million vice-president and director-level contacts.”
https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/32428/data-aggregator-leaks-93m-people-s-personal-information

Big data in the balance – SciDevNet, 23 November 2018
“This past summer, the EU launched an initiative to track migration in real time using big data ‒ the masses of machine-readable data each one of us leaves behind every time we use an electronic device.”
https://www.scidev.net/global/data/supported-content/big-data-in-the-balance.html

LinkedIn violated data protection by using 18M email addresses of non-members to buy targeted ads on Facebook – TechCrunch, 24 November 2018
“LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users, has been called out a number of times for how it is able to suggest uncanny connections to you, when it’s not even clear how or why LinkedIn would know enough to make those suggestions in the first place.
Now, a run-in with a regulator in Europe illuminates how some of LinkedIn’s practices leading up to GDPR implementation in Europe were not only uncanny, but actually violated data protection rules, in LinkedIn’s case concerning some 18 million email addresses.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/24/linkedin-ireland-data-protection/

UK parliament piles pressure on Facebook over data policies – Financial Times, 25 November 2018
“Confidential Facebook documents seized by the UK parliament could be published this week as members of parliament continue to ramp up pressure on the technology company’s executives following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Damian Collins, chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, told the Financial Times that “very important and very relevant” documents had been obtained from the founder of Six4Three, a US app developer, who was on a business trip in London last week.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9191bfec-f0c3-11e8-9623-d7f9881e729f

Corvus Insurance lands a fresh $10 million to turn sensor data into actionable info for its food and pharma customers – TechCrunch, 26 November 2018
“Corvus Insurance, a two-year-old, Boston-based insurance company that uses data across more than 50 criteria to predict and prevent losses for its corporate customers in the food and pharmaceutical industries, has attracted $10 million in funding from .406 Ventures and Hudson Structured, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures.
The company had previously raised $4 million seed funding led by Bain.
It’s an interesting company. Much of the data it extracts comes from Internet of Things sensors that can be used to predict the likelihood of a claim, including pressure on a roof owing to the weight of snow, for example. But it also relies on other data from all around, including videos, mobile phones and social media and turns them into tools for risk management.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/26/corvus-insurance-lands-a-fresh-8-million-to-turn-sensor-data-into-actionable-info-for-its-food-and-pharma-customers/

Collecting passenger data can help airlines’ customer service and profitability soar, but as Cathay Pacific hack shows it can be a risky strategy – South China Morning Post, 25 November 2018
“Data has the potential to be valuable cargo to airlines but the cyber hacking crisis that engulfed Cathay Pacific Airways in October has shown there is considerable risk along with reward.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/transport/article/2174877/collecting-passenger-data-can-help-airlines-customer

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