Businesses need to make sure big data isn't abused

Organisations need to be ethical about analysing data, especially in a post-Prism world, says panel at SAS conference in Amsterdam

Businesses need to be careful about what they analyse big data for and how they do it following the revelations regarding the US National Security Agency's alleged data-gathering programme dubbed Prism.

That's the message that came out of the "Big Data and Analytics in Action" panel at the SAS Premier Business Leadership Series conference in Amsterdam.

The panel, comprising representatives from SAS, Turkish bank Akbank, the Mayor's office in the German city of Heidelberg and customer science firm dunnhumby, said their organisations each have policies preventing the improper use of big data.

"We have strict rules on how we use data or share data when doing something with big data, especially if the data is directly related to the customers," said Attila Bayrak, senior VP of CRM at Akbank.

"At Akbank we have some very regulated governance surrounding regulatory issues – policies that ensure we hide some very personal data about our customers," he said, adding that the bank is doing its utmost to gain insights from its customer data in order to provide them with the services they need - but without blurring the lines of ethics.

"Maybe there's 80-85 per cent [of data] you do not need. So there should be a set of policies around the data surrounding the ethics and that's part of what we're trying to do," Bayrak told the audience.

"You need to concentrate on the focus of your study and not much more," he added.

Meanwhile, the City of Heidelberg believes itself to be the first government office to mine data from social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, in order to gauge and encourage civic engagement in public life. Nicole Huber, Chief of Staff of the Mayor's office told the audience: "From our point of view it's all public... we can only scan the information that's public so we don't disrupt anyone's privacy."

SAS senior vice president Jim Davis said organisations need to ensure they're not taking an unethical advantage from the pools of data they have.

"The same technologies that make personalisation from a consumer perspective so wonderful, there's great things that can be done we just have to make sure those things don't get abused," he said.