As the industry of “Big Data” – the ability to capture, manage, and analyze large amounts of information – continues to grow, internal legal issues will emerge that most businesses will perceive as only secondary in importance. The traditional role of most IT department’s today is to “support the mission” of the organization, and for years, that meant the building and maintenance of a computer systems infrastructure. However, most business and IT industry experts (i.e. Gartner, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, etc.) agree that a new era of “predictive intelligence” will change the scope of the IT professionals role within the organization. The question for the CEO and Board of Directors will be, “Is it healthy for the long-term viability of our enterprise to allow one person unfettered access to our most valuable asset?”
“Is it healthy for the long-term viability of our enterprise to allow one person unfettered access to our most valuable asset?”
A savvy organization will have internal and external controls in place to ensure that the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of unstructured data is protected from misuse or abuse. This is more than just technological toolkits that enable IT administrators to capture and print out data reports. It’s about transforming the corporate culture to reflect a company-wide standard of understanding on what is acceptable data usage. Failing to accomplish such an initiative could lead to costly litigious claims for the organization (i.e. trade-secret exploitation, employment law, privacy rights, breach of contractual obligations, defamation, etc.).