The Brave New World of Data

18 Sep 2020

Data is identity. Data is business. Data is careers. Data is the job. Data is everything. Data is everywhere.

Image Source: https://draup.com/talent/whitepapers/us-ai-and-big-data-talent-assessment/

Every transaction we make either depends on available data or gives rise to new data. Doesn’t matter if it is logical or emotional, monetary or not, tangible or not, recorded or not. Both visible and invisible data are all-pervasive in human lives.

Among such ubiquitous material, what makes money is held in great respect and called “Data”, while the rest goes into irretrievable history.

Every business wants to make money. Every business that makes money needs and produces more such data.

At one time, money or gold used to be so precious. Losing them would have dire consequences. Data is the new entrant into the elite. These days, losing data has consequences much direr than when, say, money is lost.

Then, we needed to secure money, like the most precious possession in our life. Now, we need to secure and handle data with just as much care if not more, because one wrong decision can have unimaginable impacts on individuals, corporates, or even economies. Such is the regulatory landscape around data these days.

That brings us to the already well established data security domain. This is so vast a topic that despite the thousands of volumes and series of books written on this subject, it still remains an enigma for most people. Perhaps, like any other technical subject appears to a non-technical person.

Data and its security creates work for both kinds of people, good and bad. Business starts minding its business. Bad will come in and try to steal the data. Good will try to stop the mishap, or will learn from failing to stop. These days, even a startup takes data security very seriously. But would it exist without someone who manages the data.

That calls for a precursor - Data Management and Governance. The only way to ensure that data security guys will have a bit easier job either in stopping a breach, or investigating a breach, is to commit to a solid platform, that is data management. If data management is not up to the standard, securing it becomes almost a theoretical subject for C-suite discussions, resulting in no tangible action.

The challenges caused by data not so well managed from its inception can lead to nightmares, they are often ruthless and painful.

We already have an idea how vast these fields could be based on the severity that is explained so far. But imagine the situation that you are challenged on daily basis with questions related to data management, data security, data privacy/protection, data on cloud, data shared with a service provider, etc. This complex and challenging are our daily routines becoming now, and this is just the beginning.

• The notorious world of AI/ML combo
• The robotics that are already entering the hospitality and medical industries
• The scary world of crypto currencies and blockchains (or the digital ledgers)
• The ongoing noise around digitalization of banks and fintech
• The ever rising Internet of Things (IoT) products and services
• The unstoppable (apparently) world of social media

And more domains like these are just starting to look straight into our eyes, and we are yet to learn to look them eye to eye. These fields are producing insurmountable volumes of data and are expected to ooze exponentially as each minute passes. Because data is produced in less than a minute these days with the data processing and storing systems we have currently. The future is always interesting.

Present is even more exciting as we can witness how all this is shaping up, like in a time lapse video of a flower blossoming, or a seed sprouting.

There are numerous documentaries and news echoing around the data challenges and some of them just brilliant and thought-provoking.

1. Snowden
2. Don’t f**k with cats
3. The Social Dilemma
4. Facebook & Cambridge Analytica Scandal
5. Schrems II & the Privacy Shield

One useful take away

It is no longer sufficient that you develop skills in a single narrow specialized field. To become efficient in daily work, we need to leverage on knowledge gained in all these areas because none of these work in silos.

One of these days, I had the opportunity to read a draft publication and the beginning statement is so true and stimulating, that it rightfully demands all our attention.

With the explosion of the digital universe, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how organizational decision making (i.e., the business-oriented perspective) is intertwined with an understanding of enterprise data assets (i.e., the data-oriented perspective). - Vijay Khatri