You are a node in the net, whether you know it or not

On 9 January, Rebecca “The Privacy Professor” Herold is the featured presenter at ISACA’s free webinar titled “Where Do You Draw the Creepy Line? Privacy, Big Data Analytics and the Internet of Things.”

ISACA: How creepy is the current state of privacy and how are Big Data and the Internet of Things adding to the creepiness?
Rebecca: It is significantly more creepy than ever before in history, much more than most folks realize. Even more than most IT, information security and some privacy folks would expect. We have so much more data now being collected by an infinite number of technology gadgets. Sometimes we do not even realize that this collected data relates to what people are doing, where they are at, their health, their preferences, etc. These gadgets and sources of data are part of the Internet of Things—in the sky, on our bodies, in our phones, in our homes, in our cars.

Now, with that increasingly huge amount of data, we also have more computing-analytics capability than ever before. Algorithms that were not even imagined a few years ago are able to take huge data pots, stir them up, and know the intimate details of our lives. Such capabilities—even without explicit names—can be overwhelmingly creepy if you think about it long enough.

ISACA: What challenges/opportunities does the current environment offer privacy/risk/IT professionals?
Rebecca: There are plenty.

Opportunities: How to use Big Data analytics and the data collected from the Internet of Things to do innovative and exceedingly useful and helpful things, such as cure diseases, catch criminals, make living with physical and health challenges easier, etc.

Challenges: To do all of this without revealing too much about people; without arriving at the wrong conclusions; without causing irreparable damage to people’s lives. To do all of this while following consistent rules and standards to give people choices about how their data is used and shared in such situations.

Or course, this leads to more opportunities for information security and privacy professionals to address challenges; to research and determine the related privacy risks and then determine the best ways (new standards) to implement information security and privacy—effectively—within the Internet of Things and when using Big Data.

ISACA: What are important questions to ask before using Big Data analytics?
Rebecca: What is the true business need to use Big Data analytics? How will you protect the results? When will you dispose of the related data?

Rebecca Herold, CIPM, CIPP/IT, CIPP/US, CISSP, CISM, CISA, FLMI
CEO, Rebecca Herold & Associates
Partner, Compliance Helper

http://www.isaca.org/Knowledge-Center/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=364