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Data is a key business asset in the digital economy. Companies with access to large datasets are increasingly valued higher than those associated with physical products or more traditional assets (e.g., data technology companies are valued substantially higher than airlines that own planes and exclusive lucrative licenses to certain routes).
Long before the pandemic, Gartner predicted that in 2022 companies would be valued on their information portfolios. Therefore, companies have a strategic imperative to understand what data they have, how it can be used/re-used, and what compliance investments are needed to realize its benefits while maintaining trust. This is best achieved by a privacy-by-design approach leveraging technology-enabled data governance leading to great customer experiences that drive business value and minimize exposure.
Companies that have underinvested in their privacy programs are at risk of legal and regulatory fines and requirements to purge both the data they collect as well as any “tainted data” (e.g., algorithms developed using the data illegally collected, used or shared).
These risks are not academic and the penalties are high: global data protection regulators routinely act on consumer and employee complaints associated with poor data hygiene and practices. Since enforcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation began in 2018, regulators have issued more than 900 fines totaling 1,544,575,254 euros.
Moreover, when looking at a company’s brand and trust story, data privacy is increasingly factoring into the calculus. Employees want to work at companies who are doing right by their consumers who are also making choices based on privacy, while data governance and privacy protections are becoming a focus of the investment community in companies’ environmental, social and governance strategies.
A key issue in data governance or management is…
