A new market research report shows that by 2027, the overall big data security market will grow to $64.4 billion. It’s not surprising. Some reports estimate 90 percent of all global data ever created was created in just the past few years. That’s good news for marketers looking to gain insights into their customers’ minds. But it’s also a huge can of worms in terms of increased security risks, privacy, and storage issues, especially now when many employees are working from home on potentially unsecured networks. Customers need to know their data is secure — your customer experience in the wake of COVID-19 depends on it. The following are a few reasons marketers should care about big data security in digital transformation.
If you’re not sure if your data is secure, be sure to check out my latest article on data security while working from home.
With the outgrowth of the Internet of Things (IoT), marketing teams now have massive amounts of data to collect about their customers. They can find out where they are, what time they exercise, how much they text, and even how well they sleep. But the flip side of connected devices is that they produce a lot of data your company doesn’t really need. I know most companies probably have data stored in multiple places, from multiple sources. This is where a customer data platform can help. I’ve written here on Forbes a few times about customer data platforms, but as a quick recap: A customer data platform is a growing category and solution set being developed by companies like SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Segment and Microsoft among many others, that can serve as a single point of truth for customer information. They allow you to gather information from many different channels, platforms, and devices into one location to create a whole and up-to-date view of your customer. With that unified view, you can quickly determine what data you actually need and what data you don’t.
After all, every piece of data you collect is a security risk; you need to make the risk justifiable. Where does your company stand in terms of being intentional with the data it collects?
Customers aren’t stupid. They understand that their data is valuable and in today’s market, they want full transparency about how you may use it. They don’t want to provide it for no reason, and they certainly don’t want to offer it up to companies who won’t take care of it. As the big data market — and big data security — continue to grow, it’s on marketers to understand how privacy and security play into their over customer experience and brand. And I don’t just mean posting a note on the home-page warning customers you’re nabbing their data. I mean taking a proactive approach to being transparent about data use at every point of the customer journey, and making the customers’ sharing of data “worth it” at every stage. That also means explaining who you are selling data to. Customers know that if they’re getting a service for free, it’s in exchange for data. So what are you doing with that data? Who has access to it?
A customer data platform acts as sort of a paper trail for data.
