This week in IT: Despite data driving brilliant growth, privacy is critical

Rostow Ravanan, CEO, Mindtree,  in a recent conversation with Moneycontrol talked about the critical role privacy will play in the technology dominated world.

Given the recent instances of privacy breaches, it is hardly a wonder why it is so important. In December 2018, reports that Amazon’s Alexa eavesdropped on a conversation, recorded it and sent it to a friend came to light.

Tech giant Google has been fined $55 million by France for the violation of that person's privacy. Google is looking at a fine of $4 billion by the European Union, if the GDPR complaints raised by the consumer protection group against its location tracking were proven to have violated privacy regulations.

Facebook recently said that it expects a fine of $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations.

Ravanan pointed out that as much as technology has a brilliant growth, the invasion of privacy could be a roadblock to this growth unless the industry addresses those concerns quickly.

“Today you can’t ignore that how many of these high profile cases where laptops are compromised and devices eavesdropping on conversations and sending emails,” he said.

He further added that the world cannot ignore privacy violations and that privacy will definitely will be important for common man and therefore governments will have to respond.

“When it comes to privacy concerns you will see government reacting and putting in regulations. For instance India has done data localization, European Union’s GDPR and even California’s privacy law California Consumer Privacy Act,” he added.

However going by the fines imposed upon technology firms, enterprises seem to have trouble over them and continue to reiterate the need to separate business and personal data. At a time when personal data and business data is blurring it is increasingly become hard to differentiate them.

If you deem your meal preference as personal data, consumers willingly share them to get better personalisation. Do you classify it as a personal data or business data?

When lines are blurring, enterprises do understand that it is harder to draw a line. Ravanan pointed out that it is a trade-off one has to make. It also depends on the trust the person has on the enterprise that his or her data would be protected and not be misused.

This is where most organisations are not getting it right. Enterprises have to develop a lot of maturity, systems and communication to make sure that consumer trusts them.

The government should put in the relevant amount of regulations so that you cannot misuse consumer data, but doesn’t stymie innovation. A balance has to be worked out.