Data has become available for not only legitimate uses but also for abuses. Big data has the ability to change our lives. Think of a future in which you know what the weather will be like. There is a possibility of malicious use, there are security and privacy threats to the big data that you must be concerned about especially if you are the who spends more time on the internet. the emergence of new threats and the way of addressing them is growing concern for today’s society without denying society the advantages that big data can bring.
Size of the Potential Problem
There are sheer scales of people who are involved in big data security incidents, the stakes have grown in number. The professional development system at Arkansas University got breached in 2014 and 50,000 people were affected. This is a huge amount of people however if in comparison to 145 million people whose birth dates, home, and email addresses and other data were stolen in a data breach at eBay in the same year.
Protecting big data sets is difficult. This may be due to the underlying technologies that are used to store and process information. Data companies that are popular like Amazon rely greatly on distributed computing, that usually involves data centers located apart from one another. Amazon has divided it global operations into 12 different regions each have multiple data centers and being potentially subject to physical and cyber attacks against numerous numbers of people servers housed inside.
Difficulties with Access Control
The best way to control access to information and physical space is by having one point which is much easier to secure than a lot of them. The fact that big data is kept in such open places runs against this principle. It is greatly vulnerable due to its size, distribution and broad range of access.
Moreover, a lot of sophisticated software components do not think of security as important enough, including parts of companies’ big data infrastructure. This leads to the chance of a potential attack.
For example, Hadoop is a group of software components that permits the programmers to process large amount of data in a distributed computing infrastructure. When it was launched, hadoop had only basic security features that were suitable for system used by only small number of users. Big companies also use hadoop as their corporate data platform, ignoring the fact that the access control process was not made for large-scale adoption.
Consumer Demand Drives Security and Privacy
It is crucial for the consumers to demand a high-level of security via vehicles such as terms and conditions, security trust seals and service level agreements from the institutions gathering and utilizing big data.
Companies in order to protect their personal data should employ encryption, intrusion detection, access control, backups, auditing and corporate procedures can protect data from being breached and going into wrong hands. Also, heightened security can also harm your privacy; it provides legal excuses for the collection of more private information.
Law enforcement agencies gather information in the name of enhanced security; everybody is treated as some terrorist or criminal, which has the possibility that the data will be used against him. Authority’s already have much information about us to provide more intelligence like the data decrypted version, the search items that we are using and our purchasing online.
This is called blanket surveillance which is justified by fundamental security principle “no one can be trusted”. The big data if used properly can enhance the privacy by permitting more data to be leveraged and also improve the quality of intelligence on attackers in the cyberspace.
For instance, in an ideal world there are no worries regarding fraudulent emails (phishing) because the big data analytics engine will have the potential to pick out nasty emails with perfect accuracy.
How Big Data is Used for You or Against You
One of the most advantageous factors of big data to the advertising agencies and marketing organizations is that they get an easy way to track you. Also, this provides them with much authorized information in a less expensive way.
Through big data, services like IBM’s Personality Insight could develop a profile of you with much intense and detailed information. Making your online activity a base line, they could judge your personal likes and interests such as your involvement in politics, travelling preferences, social habits and other things.
However, most organizations claim their behavior as a step to enhance the user’s online experience. Although it’s quiet obvious that such tracking could be used in a negative way. For instance, this could lead the insurance companies to question the customers about coverage based on these big data profiles. Yet, this practice is already been started.
However, this problem could never be solved by restricting big data collection. At this era of big data and technological advancement you could not deny the fact whether it seems beneficial or not. Therefore, the legitimate and authentic ways of big data storage should be developed in order to protect the privacy and security which could lead to a protected and productive practice.
For instance, the detection of malicious activities through legitimate big data collection could be made much easier.
The revelation of information collected and the purpose for which it would be used could eliminate many privacy issues. Therefore, big data handlers should expose such information to clarify big data privacy and security challenges.
However, the most important element for the customers is to know how the data is been collected, who can access it and how the access is taken. Also, for the organizations it is necessary to explain the security method they use for maintaining the customer’s collected data. Through this the industries could ensure their customer’s trust.