What chief data officers can learn from Facebook about building better big data security practices
The harvesting of millions of voter profiles by Cambridge Analytica in order to exploit personal fears and influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election has not made life easy for Facebook this recently.
Cambridge Analytica’s data was enriched by a separate firm, Global Science Research (GSR), which compensated hundreds of thousands of users to take a personality test and agree to have their data collected for academic use. At the same time, GSR collected information on the test-takers’ Facebook friends, building a database of tens of millions of user profiles. Facebook‘s policy allowed only collection of friends’ data to improve the user experience, and barred this data from being sold or used for advertising. Unfortunately, Facebook never confirmed that data policies were followed, which they weren’t.
Errant behavior like this strikes at the heart of big data stewardship and governance. It delivers a warning to enterprises engaged in big data (as almost all are) that the security and safekeeping of big data are every bit as important as they are for traditional data systems.
Unfortunately, most companies are ill-prepared for the kinds of security breaches and data compromises that threaten their big data on a daily basis.
What can chief data officers and big data project managers do to combat these growing big data security challenges?
Situations like the one Facebook finds itself in can damage your brand and your revenue-and it all started with lax big data governance and security practices. Although it is IT that implements the technologies to protect and prevent security and data breaches, none of this means very much if the CIO, CSO, and CDO can’t explain in plain terms to the CEO and the board how a security breach that compromises documents containing vital customer information can harm your business.
