Technology has penetrated every space, every walk of life. Be it your office, bedroom, reading zone, playground or even your kitchen and shopping experience. Nothing around us is savage but instead has been perturbed by technology in one form or the other. There was a time when one could only read books on actual paper printed entities and shopped groceries by going to the supermarket. Taking at a look now, we can realize that those days are long gone.
If someone went on asleep a few decades ago and woke up now, they would find themselves fascinated in a world where we have dedicated devices for reading like Kindle, websites that deliver products within hours of ordering them and physicians that have now taken the shape of smart watches on our wrists. The person would perceive this as a dream and probably go back to sleep again, in a desire to wake up.
Pervasive Technology and Data
As unbelievable as this is for a person from a different age, it is equally challenging for us to digest the fact that technology is advancing at one of the fastest rates on the planet right now. This advancement is coming from a lot of reasons, the primary ones are the rapid fluctuation of customer demands and their need for the best at all times.
Technology isn’t growing in abstraction in this world. It is growing with the data that it encompasses. In other words, there is not a single piece of technology today that doesn’t capture data in one form or the other. Devices and gadgets all around us keep a track of every move that is made onto them and store them as data. This is an inevitable part of technological progress, and we as humans have learned to live with it. We don’t even realize that the data is being collected from our behaviors on a daily basis and one of the main reasons behind it the pervasive nature of technology.
As a result, data is all around us now, with companies and governments whose products and software services we utilize on a daily basis. As customers, we seldom have control over it, which is why it is a scary thing. Data is a precious entity and can be utilized in any form. It is an intellectual property and can be tampered with only to cause consequences in society and even lead to life-threating results. Having said this, it becomes the primary responsibility of the organizations to focus on the data and ensure that it does not fall into the wrong hands.
The Importance of Data Privacy
Owing to these factors, tech leaders across the world are calling for more strict regulations around artificial intelligence and its proliferation in society. The World Economic Forum recently held its 2020 summit at Davos, where one of the main agendas of discussion was data privacy and the need for stringent regulations. The event saw participation from all major leaders of technology companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc.
Most of these leaders called the data dignity as crucial and the need for organizations to make sure that customer’s data is used for the good, instead of being tampered with its dignity. The huge data that is being used must be taken with the consent of the user and used for the welfare of society. The same goes for artificial intelligence. Even though every other organization is utilizing AI in form or the other, it is imperative to keep a check on the way data is being harnessed by these AIs.
Taking a look at the global scenario, data privacy has been the topic of debate for a long time now. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella pointed out that it is not only data privacy that organizations must be concerned about, but also the way how a person’s data is used in the world. Take the case of wearable devices as an example. Even though there are laws in the healthcare sector that preserve the utilization of customer’s data, who is keeping a check on wearable? These devices have so much data, right from the profile of the customer to their vital stats and deeper healthcare patterns. All this and other factors, call for a stronger and easily compliant data privacy policy.
Privacy Enhancing Technologies
In the time to come, privacy-enhancing technologies will play a huge role in protecting the data privacy of customers. On one hand, it will preserve privacy while on the other hand, enable the extraction of value from data through privacy-protected collaborations across ecosystems and data value-chains. PETs are a newly emerging branch of technology that is being used to protect the privacy and enable usage at the same time by keeping the balance between the two intact.
Battling Supply Chain Attacks
Breaches at the end of the third party are one for the worst violations of data privacy. Organizations need to ensure that their partners, suppliers, and re-sellers are protecting data appropriately. Take GDPR for example. The regulation permits working with third parties that demonstrate they have measures in place to protect the data.
Conclusion
Tech leaders all over the world are pushing for stricter regulations concerning data and artificial intelligence. This will ensure that no one organization establishes its dominance in the market while the customer’s data remains in safe hands and they have control over it.
Author Bio –
Divyesh Aegis is a working senior content editor at NEX, I manage a vast array of content like Java, Python, ML, AI, web development and programming. With a lot of experience and an aware understanding of marketing. I am an ambient and love to read inspiring articles and books on life and in general.