Companies want to use consumer data, but how far will they go for privacy protection?

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Data is the new oil. In Google’s words, data is the sunlight. And, why not? For all we know, data is the new sunshine sector in an increasingly connected world.

We are surrounded by smart phones, watches, TVs and intelligent consumer durables such as refrigerators and air conditioners that interact with each other and generate data on an everyday basis.

Let me give you a sense of how much data is being generated through these connected devices. According to a report, the data created by the Internet of Things (IOT) devices such as mobiles, smart TVs and cars is a huge source of the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data we create every day. All this happened only in the last two years.

What do you with such large volumes of data? Use those, say senior technology officers.

With a huge amount of data being generated, enterprises across the world are employing new age techniques to make sense of them. Making sense of large volumes of data gives enterprise insights and helps companies make better business plans through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Using data and applying artificial intelligence, one can make medical diagnostics much more intuitive and accurate. Education can be made interactive. Corporates can use the knowledge to design intelligent products. Alexa and IBM Watson are products of such innovation. In recent times, it is being used for climate change studies to design accurate weather models.

It is data that is the backbone of hundreds of Indian startups.

However, it is almost impossible to analyse all the data that is being generated.

A senior official from Intel India explained, “For one, enterprises do not have the bandwidth to analyse such huge volume of data. So far only 2 percent of the data generated is being analysed.”

“Imagine what the value addition will be if we can take 2 percent to 10 percent,” he said.

That is exactly what companies are doing. Enterprises are now focusing on designing products that will help corporate store and process much faster. The market is close to $200 billion and is rapidly growing.

Intel India last week launched a range of data centric products. The range of products launched were Xeon 2nd generation processor, two variations of Intel Optane SSD and Intel DC persistent memory and Ethernet 800 series adapter. Other players in the market are Dell EMC and IBM.

However, there is a catch. No one wants to talk about data privacy and protection. India’s data protection bill is yet to get the cabinet nod. The US-based tech majors are expressed their concern about ‘data localisation’ aspect. The tech majors are lobbying against the localisation rule, as it would mean that they have to store data locally in India.

India, with its 1.3 billion users, is a market no country can ignore. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said in her recent interaction with Indian media that that there was a need to differentiate consumer data from business data. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg expressed the same and said in a Facebook post that the company might not comply with local rules of all countries.

Yes, these firms have assured that they respect consumer privacy and will do the utmost to protect those. However, this response lacks that the transparency the data protection bill aims to bring.

If companies can comply with EU’s data protection policy, it makes one wonder why there is so much resistance against India’s.