Upcoming article: why it pays to think about data stewardship

Can organisations benefit from a proactive approach to data stewardship? And are there financial or other advantages to staying ahead of regulations and legislation, and ‘doing the right thing’?

I am looking for examples of organisations that have gone beyond tick box data security and privacy, and taken a best practice approach. What have they done beyond the basics, what has it cost, and what has it done to boost the business?

We are looking at policies but also practical approaches, such as checking users’ security settings, and promoting education and awareness. This really should showcase security at its best.

I am open to comments from vendors, consultants and end user organisations. For the reputation part of the story, I’d like to speak to PR professionals or lawyers with direct experience in the field.

My deadline for leads is 1700, Wednesday 21st August, by email. No calls please.

The piece will appear in The Daily Swig.

Upcoming commission: unstructured data compliance

For Computer Weekly, I’m looking at the compliance issues around gathering, storing and processing unstructured data.

This article will examine the likely compliance risks in unstructured data, and suggest potential solutions. It will ask:

  • What is unstructured data? How does it compare to structured and semi-structured data types?
  • Why is compliance an issue at all?
  • Why is achieving compliance of unstructured data potentially problematic?
  • What are the key steps to achieving unstructured data compliance?

As businesses gather ever greater volumes of unstructured data, and develop new ways to process and analyse the information, compliance becomes increasingly important. This is especially the case when organisations start to combine data sets, and use advanced analytics to search for insights in the information. Does the original consent to hold and process the data carry over to this type of application? And what happens when unstructured data is mixed with other data sets?

For the piece I am keen to have comments from data scientists, compliance experts, academics, lawyers and end user IT organisations. As the deadline is quite short, please send pitches, initial comments and leads to me by 1200 London time, June 13th by email please.