In light of the recent data breach scandals engulfing Facebook, Equifax and others, companies are starting to have conversations about ethical data mining. While much of that talk remains at a high level, organizations need to get aggressive about training and formulating best practices in order to stay on the right side of ethical data-driven business.
As the number of cyber breaches has escalated in recent years, companies have significantly stepped up data security efforts in order to mitigate the financial and reputational risks that accompany such high-profile intrusions. At the same time, however, they've paid far less attention to the ethical issues surrounding those incidents, as well as the ongoing usage of big data, including unauthorized data sharing, reselling customer information and creating algorithms that exhibit some sort of bias.
"If you don't spend the time and money that might be necessary to get the ethics right, you could have a horrible public relations nightmare," said Lucy C. Erickson, an American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Policy Fellow hosted by the National Science Foundation.
The scrutiny around ethical data mining best practices has increased, given how central data and data analytics have become to a company's core business charter. According to a recent TDWI report, 82% of enterprises are prioritizing analytics and BI as part of their technology budgets. Research from NewVantage Partners finds that 91.6% of Fortune 1000 companies are boosting their investments in big data and AI in order to stay agile and competitive.
The ability to store nearly limitless amounts of data, coupled with the enterprise shift to treat data as an asset and practice algorithmic decision making, is driving the current concerns about ethical data mining. "Professions that have traditionally worried about ethics are medicine and law, but as computer science increasingly impacts people's lives in similar ways, we are seeing greater emphasis on ethics in this domain as well," Erickson said. "There is an increasing appreciation for the need for computer programmers to grapple with how they are intersecting with the lives of humans in new ways, specifically in areas like data privacy and algorithmic decision making."
Companies' duty of care over their data is much broader than the idea of following every law to a perfect T. Companies can follow the letter of law and still cross an ethical line with their data mining efforts, cautioned David Thomas, CEO of Evident ID, which provides online identity verification services.
