Data strategy will largely influence corporate strategy

Back in May, I put together a brief post examining the similarities of cybersecurity trends and how they relate to the compliance space and its products. As someone focusing on analytics I have officially begun to train myself as much as possible in cybersecurity and data security given its relevance to safeguarding data assets. I recently completed three Coursera courses on the topics of cybersecurity and data security. Data is a central part of organizations and there can never be enough resources tending to its availability, security, and usability.

Exponential Data Growth

It’s predicted that the datosphere (a term used to refer to digital data collectively) will be133 zettabytes up 75 zettabytes in 2018. For context one Zettabyte is approximately equal to a thousand Exabytes, a billion Terabytes, or a trillion Gigabytes. Out of this, it’s expected that roughly 49% will be hosted in public clouds.

Data as a strategic asset

Chief Data Officers are now a standard function in an organization’s C Suite. The responsibilities tend to encompass everything from the architecture and organization of the data to how to monetize it. An even more clear sign of how strategic data is to organizations is how the market players are more willing to open source technologies like machine learning libraries but not as willing to share training data for the same models. High-quality data is a competitive advantage for organizations of the future.

Data Management Focus

“Worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach more than $114 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.4 percent from last year, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. In 2019, the market is forecast to grow 8.7 percent to $124 billion.” Gartner

“As a result of government inaction, private sector companies have been forced to take cybersecurity more seriously and, according to some projections, will spend over $1 trillion on digital security globally through 2021. Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase each spend around $500 million a year on cybersecurity. “ Forbes

The way we think about data will have to fundamentally change. Beyond secure application development, ongoing vulnerability scanning and enterprise way security standard, data asset security will have to be at the forefront of operations and product development.