What does the future of data privacy look like?

With the rapid advancements in all industries and areas of business operations, things are moving to the cloud to be available on-the-go, and internet technologies are ruling all businesses and organizations. Technologies such as the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence all have their basis of applications rooted into the need for data to be available on the internet so that it can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time.

The conveniences these technologies are introducing in our lives are many, and the setback is just one- data security. As IoT becomes focal for business operations to drive automation and predictive business models, there will be an increasingly crucial need to safeguard the user's private data while also balancing the convenience of operations.

Optimized data privacy is necessarily a balancing act between the data security aspect and the customer convenience factor. Companies need more and more information and customer data so that they can gauge the customer's buying patterns and recommend them similar offerings, thus creating a win-win situation for the software services or products provider and the customer.

However, in a bid to offer personalized experiences, companies often forget to lock the customer's data into a tight security channel so that unauthorized access may be prevented. This is the root cause of the security issue that has become potentially dangerous today with data breaches and compromises happening every day all over the world.

Data Privacy and Security – What's Next?

This is what the future of data privacy looks like-

Regulations and Rules – Only recently this year, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was added to the Data Protection bill in the UK, outlining the management and privacy regulations of the near endless streams of data we are producing by the second. A lot of regulations in different parts of the world can be expected as a result of which, it would be harder for organizations to leverage user-generated data to drive their decisions. The compliance with these laws will be an added burden on companies, but will necessarily ensure the privacy of the user's data. The GDPR rule includes provisions for deleting a customer's entire private data upon her request, notifying legal authorities of any data breach within 72 hours, requiring the consent of users for the collection of their data, etc.

Company-driven data security – Companies have their own reasons for ensuring the data they have is safe and secure. This interest will lead companies to enforce data protection and privacy. A serious problem that companies face is that of security breaches where a third-party fire tags on ad networks, allowing them to get to the users' data and exploit it for a variety of purposes. To curb this malpractice, companies such as Google will prohibit Data Management platforms from firing tags on publishers websites. Another solution to the issue can be to stop selling inventory on open ad exchange platforms where the seller has limited control over the person to whom it is sold. As companies increasingly need data to drive their operations with efficiency, it will become a self-interest for them to ensure the privacy of the data they capture and leverage.

Data Integration – When data is housed in one single repository, it is harder to compromise it and easier to protect it. Companies have realized that they often face data duplication, due to which they even find it hard to comply with the right-to-be-forgotten legislation. In turn, marketers have realized that duplicate data implies that the same targeted users are shown similar ads multiple times, reducing the effective reach of an ad campaign. Because of this, organizations are now planning to integrate their data through software such as CRM, marketing automation, etc., and are planning to bring in greater transparency. This change will lead to greater data security in the near future.

The future of data privacy seems bright as laws and the companies are working collaboratively to ensure data remains protected.

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