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The Importance of Data in the Information Age
Today, we live in the information age-also called the computer age, digital age or new media age-in which we have access to all types of information at our fingertips. From booking tickets to ordering foods to learning about things and more. Vast amount of of information available in the world is accessible through the Internet and most of it is free. Information is widely available to anyone who knows how to use a computer.
Data (information without context) is critical. We collect, store and process the data digitally in order to create meaningful information that is valuable to us.
The digitisation of information has had a profound impact on many fields such as business, education and research. For example, data scientists analyse existing company data/raw data to understand customer needs better, increase workforce productivity, reduce costs and detect risks. We are creating new things, digitally and physically, based on the analysis of the available information or any information that we can colect.
To understand the importance of data better from an individual perspective and how datais turned into information, let's consider another example. The search engine giant Google collects your personal data such as location specifics. Google uses this data together with public traffic data to tell you when you should leave for work to beat the morning traffic. This data, turned into information. Now s hypothetically, Google knows that you go to work on weekdays, and the time you should leave your home in order to avoid the traffic. This is information, created through data of location, time and traffic.
Another very important aspect of data is privacy and security. As the information is stored digitally, it places the privacy of individuals and organisations under the prying eyes of criminals. Earlier, informatioon was recorded and stored in relatively primitive but safe filing systems.
Why Securing Personal Data is Necessary?
Personal data can be defined as the data which is related to a living individual. The identity of this individual can be revealed using this data. If the act of revealing one's personal data is unauthorised, it is called identity theft. Increasing Personal data is confidential. number of people are shopping online, performing online banking and actively participating on social media platforms. These activities require sharing personal data, which can be the accessed by criminals for financial by important to secure the personal data by gains or other illegal motives. It is very t is adhering to cybersecurity plans.
- Personal identity theft
- Banking information theft
- Burglaries
- Loss of potential job opportunities
- Threat to your business's online reputation
- Credit card scams
- Safeguarding your insurance policy Medical benefit fraud
- Lawsuits and legal action
As technology is globally used, it is important to ensure that your valuable personal data is secure and is for your personal use only. Take the following simple steps to protect the data from cybercriminals:
- Use two-factor authentication
- Keep social network activities to private
- Don't share sensitive data with anyone
- Lock down your hardware
- Enable private browsing
- Use a password vault
- Backup data regularly
Why Securing Organisational Data is Important?
Organisations' store huge volumes of data and information. A lot of this is confidential such as financial and medical related records. An organisational data breach has many more implications than a personal data breach. The impact on sales can be huge and long lasting as the victim organisation loses money, time and market share as it slowly regenerates the lost data. Moreover, the victim company loses credibility in the market that can have significant bearing in its growth prospects. The affected customers may file lawsuits over data breach, which can translatee into a huge monetary loss for the company.
Consider the following examples of recent data breaches:
1.In a high-profile hacking case, 117 million Linkedin user accounts got compromised by a Russian hacker. The passwords of these accounts were posted for sale online.
Source: http://www.securitydegreehub.com/major-data- breaches/
2.In another hacking case, 37 million accounts from the infamous site Ashley Madison got compromised by a group of hackers called The Impact Team'. They got hold of Ashley Madison's databases and confiscated sensitive user information such as names, email addresses, search history and bank account information and held it for ransom.
Source: http://www.securitydegreehub.com/major-data- breaches/
3.In 2013, hackers stole roughly 3 million encrypted credit card numbers and login data from the technology giant Adobe's servers.
Source: http://www.securitydegreehub.com/major-data- breaches/
The challenge is to monitor, manage and safeguard organisational data and information effectively. There are several factors that should be taken into consideration; for example, volume of data, technology, policies and procedures and awareness, in order to protect organisational data.
Figure 2 shows the damage that can be caused if an organisation's data is hacked:
In the event of data loss, an organisation can suffer from the following:
Financial Loss: The most significant of the damages that an organisation may suffer in the event of a data breach is financial loss. In 2016, a research conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by IBM® suggested that the average cost of a data breach incident has risen to $4 million-up 29% since 2013. Also, as per the same research, the cost of a data breach varies widely by industry type. For example, the cost of a data breach is the highest per stolen record at $355 for the healthcare industry, as shown in Figure 3:
- Source: https://www.ibm.com/security/data- breach/
Rivalry and Competition: The data about a product if leaked to the organisation's competitor can make the competitors earn profit by launching their product earlier.
Loss of Credibility: The other disadvantage of maintaining insecure data is loss of credibility of of the organisation in the marketplace. Potential clients hesitate to keep ties with organisations who do not store data securely.
Efforts in Rework: Rework in generating the same information all over again leads to loss of |time, money and market share every day until the process of rework has been completed.
Lawsuits and Legal Actions: In case of losing customer data, an organisation may face | lawsuits and pay huge amount of money as a compensation for data loss.
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