Ethical data use

By Oona Tillotson | November 23, 2018

When it comes to the ethical use of data, there has been a lot of debate and discussion. With 2.5 quintillion records of data created every day, people are being defined by how they travel, surf the Internet, eat, and live their lives. We are in the midst of a “data revolution,” where individuals and organisations can store and analyse massive amounts of information rapidly. Leveraging data can allow for surprising discoveries and innovations with the power to fundamentally alter society: from applying machine learning to cancer research to harnessing data to create “smart” cities, data science efforts are increasingly surfacing new insights — and new questions. Working with large databases, new analytical tools, and data-enabled methods promises to bring many benefits to society.

But at what point do businesses need to be making sure that they are using the data they capture ethically, and how would they know what that means? The ethical issues around, for example, election fraud are pretty obvious, but what about a business who simply want to leverage their data to improve their processes? Well, regulations like GDPR are a good starting point, but in the years to come we can expect further regulation, and businesses need to decide if they are going to put ethical use of data at their heart of their engagement with customers, or merely toe the line.

At ACUMED Consulting, we help businesses not only understand their data better, but actively support ethical obligations around its use, storage and destruction. We can work with you to discover what you need to do to protect the data you’re gathering and design a future-proofed data management strategy that helps protect the data of your customers, suppliers and employees. Our experts will work to ensure you are always using your data in an ethical, honest and transparent way, lending your business more credibility and trustworthiness in your customers’ eyes.

If you would like to find out more about how your business can embrace ethical data use, please just get in touch with us today.

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