Day 93 – Q 2.We live an era of data driven governance. What are the threats to the data ecosystem? What would be the implications of a big data breach? Examine.

2. We live an era of data driven governance. What are the threats to the data ecosystem? What would be the implications of a big data breach? Examine.

हम डेटा संचालित शासन के युग में जीते हैं। डेटा पारिस्थितिकी तंत्र के लिए खतरे क्या हैं? एक बड़े डेटा ब्रीच के निहितार्थ क्या होंगे? जांच करें।

Introduction:

Data-driven governance is a new approach to governance, one where data is used to drive policy decisions, set goals, measure performance, and increase government transparency.

Body

Data ecosystem includes infrastructure, analytics, and applications used to capture and analyze data. Increase in use of data in governance has also brought certain threats and challenges to data ecosystem:-

• Hardware – by impregnating ICs and chip-sets for spying.
• Software – virus, malware, Trojan software and worm attacks being a regular issue. eg – WannaCry, Petya.
• Apps – like Tiktok, Snapchat, Tumblr have been used for data mining.
• Network – Attacks on networks can slowdown entire system. In October 2019, India announced that North Korean malware designed for data extraction had been identified in the networks of a nuclear power plant.
• Websites – Following an attack on Indian military forces in Kashmir, Pakistani hackers targeted almost 100 Indian government websites and critical systems. 
• Storage – Data breach of sensitive information is most feared at present times.

These threats sometimes take more ugly form such as big data breach. Under such conditions there is release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment. This would have several implications:-

• Data Privacy – The meta-data would affect the privacy of individual. This was one of the fear expressed in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Aadhar case)
• Demographic data – breach of demographic data which can be mined by foreign companies/governments so as to use it for their narrow vested interest 
• Economic implication – In the past six years, the global average cost of a data breach has grown by 12%, totaling $3.92 million per breach in 2019.
• Political Manipulation – Data collected by foreign governments (Ex: Russia, China) can be misused to influence political narrative and elections. Ex: 2016 US Presidential elections
• Diminish Trust – A data breach can put citizens and customer trust at risk.
• Legal implication – Data breaches may also impose legal liabilities and penalties upon the affected organisation along with the loss of intellectual property.

Conclusion

Need of the hour is strict data protection framework. This could be done by compiling to Justice BN Srikrishna Committee’s recommendations, and E.U’s General Data Protection Regulation.