New Gold/Data Management for Business

New Gold

Just as gold is a raw material for coins, jewelry, and watches, so too can data be viewed as the raw material from which money is obtained. In fact, a good definition of data is "facts or figures from which a conclusion can be made, giving the data perceived value by the author and the audience." Data information and statistics are often misunderstood, just like fool's gold. I found the basis for this definition from the Statistics Canada website and polished it.

Armies and families have killed each other over gold. At time of the gold rush, during 1848 - 1855 people were desperate to hold it, honor its value, and create wondrous things with it. Originally, our dollar and entire economy were based on gold. The gold standard became a mantra that meant excellence. Gold was a commodity protected by the government; there was a time government determined how much each person could have.

As you move along in this book, you will see other similarities, like government regulations of gold as a resource and control of data. The government is turning to data mining to circumvent need for warrants. It purchases data from private companies to have ready access. The US Supreme Court has tried these cases and determined an individual has no reasonable expectations of privacy to data that is held, managed, or maintained by a third party. Therefore, the Fourth Amendment does not protect an individual's data that reside in the public domain. Social media and other public venues are able to provide access to the government when asked, and no warrants or other legal procedures are necessary. Hackers (i.e., robbers) are stealing data, reselling it, releasing to the public, and holding it for ransom. If the dark net knows data has value, then we need to protect it.

In this new millennium, data is controlled, regulated, and hoarded; ownership is given to the individual so the entity cannot share it and must protect individual data through regulation reporting, security compliance, and suggested methodologies for proper management. The United States and governments throughout the world are dictating to companies how they must protect data.

For example, in 1998, the United Kingdom enacted the Data Protection Act, which states sensitive personal data cannot be transferred into a non- European Union country unless that country has the means to protect the sensitive data. Although we have our own HIPAA laws to protect individual's health data, we do not have legislation to protect the data as tightly as the European Union.

Since many companies are global and in the United States laws control healthcare-related information, companies that are not generally regulated must jump through regulatory hoops to continue doing business in the United Kingdom.

Case Summary

Take a company that runs software for schools worldwide. This company might run applications and store the production data inside the United Kingdom, but its backups might go to a colocation site outside the United Kingdom. Secondly, every vendor who could touch any of the related environments had to be audited by the United Kingdom, even if the people, database, and environment they worked on was in the United States because the individuals who own the end data lived in the United Kingdom.

The ownership and protection of each individual's data "nugget" supersedes the right and privileges of the company that houses, stores, administers, and maintains the data. That makes it an interesting statement about this economy. A business owns the data as a whole with all integral parts of the sale or service, but in the end, the business must protect the nuggets to protect the rights of the individual and incur costs for all aspects of that protection.

The cost of protecting personal information is high for companies today. They have to provide security in the form of software, firewalls, processes, and audit controls to make sure no one accessed the personal information data. The personal information data is what in many circumstances inherently adds value to the data.

Providing access but limiting details to each user is another process that causes pain points and cost overruns in projects and data management. We haven't even talked about performance and direct user access costs. How you need to deliver the data — through fax, e-mails, web portals, mobile devices, videos, images, or telephonic or voice devices — should be considered.

As access to data grows and personal information becomes more detailed, government agencies will become more critical of how data is protected. The data stream causes corporations to follow protocols to protect their data and to protect rights and privileges of the data owner. The government will manipulate the way businesses grow, spend money, and hire professionals.

This has created a time when data might be as important as any other commodity but will need to be protected as your company's success depends on keeping it in the vault.

Summary

Data is becoming more relevant in the world around us. Protecting someone's data and ensuring it will be accessible are causing more regulations throughout the world.

Data is becoming so valuable that in the next chapters you will be able to create entire markets around preparing, massaging, and analyzing data that could be stored in your systems.

Why Do I Protect It?

Got Data? Protect It

If you have data, then your business data management problems are directly correlated to the type of and amount you are managing. If you own a restaurant, you have to protect the credit card transactions that are handled through your point-of-sale, or POS, software. The POS is responsible for security, maintenance, and management of that data. After you set up the POS, check the background of anyone who handles transactions and set up guidelines for properly handling the credit card and entering the transaction in the POS. If you do this, you are probably safe...