As we’ve discussed in prior installments of this series on data, last year saw more breaches than ever before. And just this year, we’ve been consumed with news stemming from revelations that data firm Cambridge Analytica used data from Facebook to target as many as 87 million users for political purposes during the 2016 US election campaign.
Data is an inherently vulnerable thing. Numbers and words, bits and bytes: It can have great power, but it is continually in peril of being exposed by bad actors — or just bad data management.
Increased data security is a desired outcome of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into full effect last week. This European law governs the handling of European Union members’ personal data, no matter where it is. But it has far-reaching implications as companies all over the world scramble to determine how it will affect them. It’s too soon to tell what kind of effect it will have, but we are watching closely.
Comments