Unlocking Value from Data: An Indian Context

Data is the new strategic asset, in today’s connected era. Fueling global economy and economic prosperity, it is the new currency driving the future. Significantly, secondary data continues to explode all around us across platforms, albeit fragmented, driven by disruptive technologies.

However, most enterprises struggle to protect, manage, and gain insights while unlocking value from massive amounts of critical secondary data. A lot of companies still use outdated practices and tool backup kit in the constantly changing tech space. Craving for agility, flexibility, compliance and security and how they require a new data protection strategy including better use of data.

The good news is progressive leaders are recognizing the hidden value buried deep within data while reshaping customer expectations and fostering a new demand for consistent, yet personalized experiences. This is transforming the way enterprises manage secondary data and applications to drive efficient decision making, improving customer experience and delivering incremental growth.

From the mandatory data breach notification laws to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there is an increasing demand for organizations to be able to deliver federated search capabilities and assurance of secondary data to meet compliance head on.

India too is not immune to this new trend. The past few months have seen a series of events on the data protection front. The data protection bill set up by BN Srikrishna submitted their recommendation on data protection to the IT minister. The report emphasized that data privacy is a burning issue and there are three parts to this triangle, which are - the citizen’s rights have to be protected, the responsibilities of the states have to be defined but the data protection can't be at the cost of trade and industry.

The recent verdict of Supreme Court on Aadhaar will go a long way in protecting user data, ensuring that there are fewer risks in data leakages. However, private enterprises will need to get their act together quickly to migrate to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) norms and ensure that secondary data is managed securely across locations.

While it’s a bit early to predict exactly how it will look, the function and value of data looks different from just a few years ago – a trend most can agree is welcome. What remains unchanged for enterprises though is the need for driving more value and business insight out of their data and transform legacy infrastructures into modern data environments.

Secondary data came under the scanner earlier this year after a massive data leak under the Facebook-Analytica scandal which affected nearly 5.62 lakh people in India. Soon after this Reserve Bank of India came out with its ruling on data localisation where in all payments companies have to store data pertaining to their customers within India in order to ensure the safety of user data. The companies were given a deadline of October 15 to comply with the guidelines of RBI. Though this move was lauded by many, a lot players in the requested for an extension of the deadline.

Another incident where secondary data was compromised with was the Paytm – Google Pay feud. In the case Paytm filed a complaint with the National Payments Corporation of India accusing Google Pay of violating user and data privacy by sharing secondary data with their group companies and third parties.  The issue here being that Google Pay, which is an unregulated platform, has the scope of using their customers’ data for their monetary gains with complete disregard for the users’ need for privacy. In the backdrop of India’s data protection bill being formed it is a matter of concern that global companies are sharing personal data.

While more measures are being taken to ensure the safety of secondary data, a top government agency in India has suggested that the country’s central bank should call for an audit of the databases of all multinational firm by Indian regulators. Government, organizations and every one of us have a responsibility to protect our data. Through this Indian regulators will store a copy of data on local transactions within the country. This will reduce the scope of misuse of data because at the crux of the matter every organization is responsible for its data and information where it is placed.

As disruptive technologies all around us shift the paradigm and make the world better, it is high time, enterprises securely harness their secondary data to augment growth. A trusted partner can help them realize their business goals. Certainly, when used effectively, secondary data will provide the foundations to greater innovation, improved security, flawless compliance and better data analytics.

By Ramesh Mamgain, Area Vice President India and SAARC Region, Commvault