Tag: data

5 Common Data Protection Challenges That Businesses Face

by admin on April 27, 2024 in Business Information Companies

Data protection requires administrative and operational controls; technical controls, such as access management, authorization and encryption; and physical controls that protect the computing hardware and work environments.

Many organizations focus on technical controls and protections, said Rebecca Herold, founder and CEO of consultancy Rebecca Herold & Associates, but they’re not addressing the administration protections, such as documented policies and procedures to make employees aware, or sufficiently monitoring the physical aspects. “So, it is just piling into the ongoing breaches that you read about every day in many industries around the world,” she added.

Everyone rightly focuses on the regulated data, including personal, card holder and healthcare information. But there’s a lot more that needs attention. “It’s expanded,” said Heidi Shey, analyst at Forrester Research. “It’s not just the source code that people have historically been worried about or secret formulas.”

Data protection challenges mount

New data protection challenges can involve IoT sensor data collection, algorithms, APIs, and machine learning and AI models that companies have developed. “Many times, consumer IoT devices such as smart cameras and smart vehicles are being used to support the business,” Herold explained. “And there is data that is shared that is collected by those products that usually the business isn’t even aware of.”

With the potential for financial loss, reputational harm and penalties for noncompliance with data privacy protection regulations, security leaders need to track the location and ownership of the company’s data at rest, in transit and in use and understand the security risks. That includes the data encryption and sensitivity level, potential impact on the business if the data is compromised and the dependencies between the data and other applications.

Globally, the 35 highest data privacy violation fines in 2023 totaled $2.6 billion, according to Forrester. The EU issued 19 of those fines

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): What you need to know to stay compliant

by admin on April 9, 2024 in Business Information Companies

Who within my company is responsible for compliance?

The GDPR defines several roles that are responsible for ensuring compliance: data controller, data processor, and the data protection officer (DPO).

The data controller defines how personal data is processed and the purposes for which it is processed. The controller is also responsible for making sure that outside contractors comply.

[Related: GDPR requirements raise the global data protection stakes]

Data processors may be the internal groups that maintain and process personal data records or any outsourcing firm that performs all or part of those activities. The GDPR holds processors liable for breaches or non-compliance. It’s possible, then, that both your company and processing partner, such as a cloud provider, will be liable for penalties even if the fault is entirely on the processing partner.

The GDPR requires the controller and the processor to designate a DPO to oversee data security strategy and GDPR compliance. Companies are required to have a DPO if they process or store large amounts of EU citizen data, process or store special personal data, regularly monitor data subjects, or are a public authority. Some public entities such as law enforcement may be exempt from the DPO requirement.

Many of the GDPR requirements do not relate directly to cybersecurity, but the processes and system changes needed to comply could affect existing security systems and protocols.

The GDPR might also change the mindset of business and security teams toward data. Most companies see their data and the processes they use to mine it as an asset, but that perception will change, says Lewis. “Given GDPR’s explicit consent and firms needing to be much more granular in their understanding of data and data flows, there’s a whole set of liabilities that now exist with

72 Top Big Data Companies to Know in 2024

by admin on April 3, 2024 in Business Information Companies

The term big data is used in the business and tech world pretty frequently. In a nutshell, it’s the process of taking very large sets of complex data from multiple channels and analyzing it to find patterns and problems, all with the goal of gaining actionable insights. Big data is very valuable, but also a lot to handle for traditional software — which is where professionals come in to unravel it all.

Top Big Data Companies To Know

Alteryx
FourKites
Google
IBM
Oracle
Salesforce
SAP
Splunk

A number of companies have emerged to provide ways to wrangle huge datasets and understand the relevant information within them. Some offer powerful data analysis tools, while others aggregate and organize datasets into charts, graphs and other data visualization formats.

The following companies all work with big data in some way, enabling other organizations to make better sense of their businesses and take new steps toward problem-solving.

72 Big Data Companies to Know

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

More than 350 brands representing industries ranging from financial services to media and publishing use BlueConic’s customer data platform to provide them with actionable insights based on consented first-party data. Its customizable solutions serve marketing, data science and other growth-focused teams from companies such as Heineken, Hearst, Mattel and Franklin Sports.

Location: Fully Remote

Arity works to bring greater safety and efficiency to the transportation industry by using data and analytics to build solutions with applications for auto insurance providers, marketers, public sector entities and mobile app developers. For example, its crash detection solution relies on proprietary algorithms to enable mobile apps to detect vehicle collisions so that emergency services can quickly be notified to respond and app users can be connected to other helpful resources.

Location: New York, New York

Caden serves as a two-sided data

RBI Restricts Business Card Use and Data Sharing

by admin on March 10, 2024 in Business Card Companies

RBI imposes limits on business card usage and restricts the sharing of customer data

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recently issued new rules for credit and debit cards meant for business accounts, to enhance the security and efficiency of card transactions. The new rules, which came into effect immediately, cover various aspects of card issuance, conduct, and data sharing The RBI has also ordered Visa to stop using an unauthorized route to make business-to-business card payments, which involved fintech companies as intermediaries in this article, we will discuss the main features and implications of the new rules, as well as the reasons behind the RBI’s actions.

The new rules issued by RBI are as follows:

Monitoring the end use of funds:

The RBI has directed the card issuers to put in place an effective mechanism to monitor the end use of funds by cardholders, especially for large-value transactions. The card issuers should also ensure that the card transactions comply with the applicable laws and regulations, such as the Foreign Exchange Management Act, of 1999, the Prevention of The Income Tax Act of 1961 and the Money Laundering Act of 2002.

Restricting data sharing:

The RBI has made it illegal for card issuers to provide any outsourced partners with consumer card data unless the partners must perform their duties. The card issuers should also obtain the explicit consent of the cardholders before sharing their card data with any third party. The card issuers should also ensure that the storage and ownership of the card data remain with them and that the card data is not compromised or misused by any party.

Supporting tokenization:

The RBI has allowed card issuers to support the tokenization of card data, which is a process of replacing the actual card number with an

Sharing sensitive business data with ChatGPT could be risky

by admin on February 10, 2024 in Business Information Companies

“Those queries are stored and will almost certainly be used for developing the LLM service or model at some point. This could mean that the LLM provider (or its partners/contractors) are able to read queries and may incorporate them in some way into future versions,” it added. Another risk, which increases as more organizations produce and use LLMs, is that queries stored online may be hacked, leaked, or accidentally made publicly accessible, the NCSC wrote.

Ultimately, there is genuine cause for concern regarding sensitive business data being inputted into and used by ChatGPT, although the risks are likely less pervasive than some headlines make out.

Likely risks of inputting sensitive data to ChatGPT

LLMs exhibit an emergent behavior called in-context learning. During a session, as the model receives inputs, it can become conditioned to perform tasks based upon the context contained within those inputs. “This is likely the phenomenon people are referring to when they worry about information leakage. However, it is not possible for information from one user’s session to leak to another’s,” Andy Patel, senior researcher at WithSecure, tells CSO. “Another concern is that prompts entered into the ChatGPT interface will be collected and used in future training data.”

Although it’s valid to be concerned that chatbots will ingest and then regurgitate sensitive information, a new model would need to be trained in order to incorporate that data, Patel says. Training LLMs is an expensive and lengthy procedure, and he says he would be surprised if a model were trained on data collected by ChatGPT in the near future. “If a new model is eventually created that includes collected ChatGPT prompts, our fears turn to membership inference attacks. Such attacks have the potential to expose credit card numbers or personal information that were in the training data. However,

4 Takeaways on Data Collaboration for Advertising and Marketing

by admin on December 25, 2023 in Advertising & Marketing

Companies across multiple industries increasingly look to build a complete view of their customers or business by complementing their data with external business partners’ data. For advertising and marketing use cases, brands, media publishers, agencies and their partners want to collaborate using datasets that are stored across many different channels and applications to improve the relevance of their campaigns and better engage with consumers throughout their journey.

To achieve this, companies are investing in data clean rooms to allow multiple parties to analyze their collective datasets to facilitate more data-driven, strategic analyses with more comprehensive insights. Amazon Web Services (AWS) built AWS Clean Rooms to help companies and their partners more easily and securely analyze and collaborate on their collective datasets—without sharing or copying each other’s underlying data. With AWS Clean Rooms, customers can create a secure data clean room in minutes and collaborate with any other company on AWS to generate unique insights about advertising campaigns, investment decisions, and research and development.

Recently, the AWS Clean Rooms team met with a group of 50 customers and partners, including brands, publishers, and agencies, to discuss priorities for data collaboration. During this discussion, AWS asked the group to complete an anonymous survey about data collaboration. Following are the four key takeaways from our findings.

1: The top motivation for data collaboration tool adoption is customer data protection

Figure 1 – Collaboration motivation results

How we evaluated: We asked the group to select as many motivations as applicable when seeking collaboration tools from the five options listed in Figure 1. Responders could select as few or as many options, and numbers reflect the count of votes per option.

When prompted for why they seek out data collaboration tools in the first place, the top selected motivation from the survey group was customer

Financial markets tumble after fresh jobs data

by admin on October 10, 2023 in Business Financial News

Home » Grains advance after ship hits sea mine in Black Sea

Recap for October 5

Wheat futures continued to bounce off last week’s contract lows with the support of Black Sea news. A Turkish vessel headed for Ukraine ports to load grain struck a sea mine of Romania. No one was injured and the vessel continued toward its destination. Corn prices also rallied on the Black Sea news, climbing to their highest levels in more than a month. Soybean futures were higher, in bargain buying and with the support from the wheat and corn rallies, although gains were limited by lackluster export demand, falling energy prices and signs of an ample US crop now well into its harvest. December corn futures added 11½¢ to settle at $4.97½ per bu. Chicago December wheat added 18¼¢ to close at $5.78¼ per bu. Kansas City December wheat jumped 24¢ to close at $6.90½ per bu. Minneapolis December wheat advanced 19¾¢ to close at $7.31½ per bu. November soybeans rose 7¾¢ to close at $12.80¾ per bu. October soybean meal added $4.90 to close at $373.60 per ton. October soybean oil fell 0.57¢ to close at 57.86¢ a lb.

US equity markets spent most of the day lower, turned briefly higher, but were down again at closing bells as investors looked ahead to Friday’s report on US employment figures for September. The pre-report holding pattern was broken by a second straight decline in the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note, which ended Thursday at 4.715%, down from 4.735% on Wednesday. On Tuesday, it rose to 4.801%, its highest 3 p.m. yield since August 2007. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 9.98 points, or 0.03%, to close at 33,119.57. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 5.56 points, or 0.13%, to settle at

Data Has Become the Fuel for Small Business Financial Stability

by admin on September 6, 2023 in Business Financial News

Main Street may be the soul of America, but its businesses find themselves increasingly embattled.

That’s because small and medium-sized business (SMBs) looking for credit or working capital and other financing solutions are often underserved and ignored by traditional financial institutions (FIs).

It is a damning double-edged sword: The worse the economic situation, the more the SMBs need help easing their cash flow shortages, but the less likely risk-averse banks and lenders are to help them.

Fortunately, new innovative and digital-first solutions are emerging that promise to help SMBs find the right fit for their needs.

The difference between these new products and those offered by giant incumbent banks and other FIs? It all boils down to data-driven decisioning.

From credit underwriting and alternative financing, data is the fuel that is helping the next generation of SMBs find their financial engine.

And as access to working capital and other financing solutions continues to tighten due to macro pressures, many SMBs are increasingly looking to tap emergent financing solutions that help them better operate in today’s fast-evolving digital landscape.

Solving for Business Lending Frictions

One in three SMBs (33%) say that large, national banks are their preferred lender — but the legacy banking system wasn’t designed toward making it easy for unproven and newer businesses to get access to capital.

Still, many SMBs have shied away from using newer, digital options, including neobanks, due to a lack of education around their offerings.

But the Main Street financing situation is getting increasingly dire: Three-quarters of SMBs reported to PYMNTS that they would close within 60 days of a cash crunch.

“What we’re seeing is an increase in need from small businesses for funding,” Scott Steinberg, chief product officer and chief operating officer at data intelligence platform Enigma Technologies, told PYMNTS.

Business Owners Increasingly Rely On Social Media To Gather Customer Data

by admin on August 24, 2023 in Business Information Companies

Today, the issue of data collection of online users remains a controversial issue.

getty

Today, data collection of online users remains a controversial issue. However, for many businesses, it isn’t an issue of violating customers’ privacy but is a way to ensure that the business has the best chance at success. The question remains where and how data collection comes into the picture.

According to a new study from Skynova, 64 percent of business owners collect your data from their social media sites, with Facebook accounting for 72 percent of the data collection, while Facebook-owned Instagram came in second at 59 percent. They were the most popular social media platforms in terms of collecting customer data based on page likes, shares, and follows.

“Twitter and LinkedIn were definitely reviewed often as well. While scouring them for data, companies collected information related to page likes, shares, and follows the most,” the study noted. “Social media data collection plays an especially important role in optimizing a company’s marketing strategy – from it, you can better optimize your social content, update your SEO strategies (which are crucial in the social media world), monitor your brand image, and start targeting influencers to help promote your offering.”

Purchase history and interaction with business websites were reportedly the data that business owners found most useful according to 23 percent of survey respondents. Many of the businesses also conducted the data research themselves, while some 34 percent also opted to bring in a third-party for data collection and integration-related labor.

According to Skynova, almost half of the surveyed business owners and executives said that they collect data at least weekly, and the more people a company employed, there was a higher chance that the data was collected on such a regular basis. Many companies utilized their

How do companies protect customer data?

by admin on August 22, 2023 in Business Information Companies

Data breaches have become an everyday reality for many organizations, whose customers feel the effects of identity theft and other fraudulent activities.

Business operations require the exchange of customer information, but companies that take customer data security seriously can build trust between themselves and their customers. To protect customer data, organizations must maintain compliance and invest in technologies that boost security to benefit their operations and customer relationships.

What kind of customer information must be secured?

As companies prepare their data security policies, they should prioritize protecting the following types of customer information:

Personally identifiable information (PII). PII refers to information that can distinguish or trace a person’s identity by itself or with other personal or identifying information linked to that individual.
Personal information (PI). PI can directly or indirectly identify, relate to or describe a person or household. PI is relatively broad and can include data associated with someone’s identity, often overlapping with PII.
Sensitive personal information (SPI). SPI came into the privacy lexicon under the California Privacy Rights Act — an amendment to CCPA. SPI covers personal data that does not directly identify an individual but may cause harm if made public. It also protects minors and their PI.
Nonpublic personal information (NPI). NPI is a type of sensitive information that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act introduced. It specifically regulates financial services institutions and includes information they obtain directly from customers or through transactions. NPI does not include publicly available information.

A chart comparing PII, PI, SPI and NPI — Explore which types of data are considered PII, PI, SPI or NPI.

Policies and regulations for data protection

The two most well-known customer data protection policies are GDPR and CCPA. In addition, at least 25 states have data protection laws related to privately and publicly owned companies.

General Data Protection Regulation

GDPR sets guidelines for businesses that

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Data protection challenges mount

Who within my company is responsible for compliance?

What is GDPR in cybersecurity

Top Big Data Companies To Know

72 Big Data Companies to Know

RBI imposes limits on business card usage and restricts the sharing of customer data

The new rules issued by RBI are as follows:

Monitoring the end use of funds:

Restricting data sharing:

Supporting tokenization:

Likely risks of inputting sensitive data to ChatGPT

1: The top motivation for data collaboration tool adoption is customer data protection

Solving for Business Lending Frictions

What kind of customer information must be secured?

Policies and regulations for data protection

General Data Protection Regulation