Voice of the DBA

Tag: data privacy

  • Protecting Data Between Services

    I saw an announcement this week that Microsoft is shutting down their HealthVault service, where someone might have chosen to store their medical records in a way that it could be shared with health professionals, but an individual could maintain control of the records. They could share them out to friends, download them, etc. It was a good idea, and I was interested in it for the future. Since I have been fortunate to mostly avoid doctors and hospitals, I never signed up, but I still could sign up as of this week.

    Google used to have a similar product, but shut it down a few years ago. I suspect that this commercial space just isn’t as lucrative and valuable as either company thought, as I don’t really see any competitors out there that might allow a user to transfer their records. While I don’t know that there needs to be a service for this, I did think of the hassles and potential issues that might exist if there were. Imagine your mother or grandmother keeping their health records here for the last decade and now needing to download them and manage them before they could be used again. What if someone downloaded these to a PC and had a hard drive failure?

    Backups are needed, we know that, and I’d hope most consumers know that, but in a rush or in the worry that these need to be copied, but securely, would you want to keep this data on a tablet or PC? Or would you want an encrypted drive. If that’s the case, would you want to ensure you have 2 (or more) of them? Easy to plan this out, hard to think about if you get a notice about the service shutting down. Imagine that your spam filter knocks this down or you’re inundated and miss it and get a final notice on Sept 1 or Oct 1? A real hassle.

    The higher level view of this in my eyes is that we need better data formats for capturing and keeping lots of our data in systems. Those of us that are impacted by the GDPR (or similar laws) might be thinking about this already, as we have a need to provide data in response to requests. Providing a report, and packaging this up, is no small task. I assume I’d use a .zip file, but maybe a .nuget with a manifest is actually a better idea for customers.

    As the use of services grows, I expect that we will want to get more portability for data over time. Certainly vendors that provide services have an incentive for tooling. WordPress has import/export for other blog services, Microsoft will help you move data from Oracle (as will Oracle in the other direction), and there are specialized vendors in niche applications doing the same, but really I’d like to see us have more open, and extensible, data formats that relate to the types of data in our lives. I know we’ll have more disparate types of data, in various formats, so why not an easy way for each of us to store text, images, and more as a service that contains some metadata, some indexing. Something like a personal data lake of sorts.

    We could have other services, like image services, visualization services for numbers, and more be authorized (or de-authorized) for our data. Imagine a way for us to allow a company to hold our data, but we disperse that to other vendors as needed for services. I could easily imagine various “storage” vendors competing and allowing us to “port” our data to a new service as easily as we port phone numbers for mobile phones. Perhaps a whole new era of data storage and management is coming.

    Or maybe we’ll just stick with the current separated, proprietary, limited view of data that we manage on hard drives and USB sticks. It’s more likely, but much less preferable in my mind.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast.

  • Scary Data Collection

    Most of us would feel fairly creeped out by finding out an AirBnb or hotel had security cameras watching us. I’m not a woman, and I’m sure ladies are especially bothered by this, but there was an AirBnB rental where a guest found a camera using a little technology scanning. While cameras are allowed, they have to be disclosed.
    While many of us would prefer not to be surveilled, we are on a regular basis. Governments are watching our vehicles, all commercial activity is tracked in multiple ways, our locations are captured and sold to anyone. And it’s not even the carriers, it could be software that we think is innocuous and helpful. I would think most people reading this know that everything you do online is tracked, and often tracked from site to site with Facebook, Google, and other APIs, even if you don’t use those companies’ services. What’s disconcerting to me is how extensive data gathering and tracking has become and most people aren’t aware how comprehensive it has become.
    And in a wonderful set of timing. As I was writing this, I got a great article about how Google apparently isn’t perceived as invading privacy to the extent that they are. We likely trust them more than we should.
    The capture and misuse of data continues to grow. Whether this is by criminals, governments, or commercial businesses, it’s something we have to deal with. This isn’t necessarily any particular organization or situation that stands out, though the larger organizations likely have an out-sized impact and benefit from this. This is one of the reasons why the GDPR and similar legislation was passed. It’s a first attempt, and arguably weak attempt, to limit the use of data by organizations in ways that might be contrary to the wishes of the human that generated the data.
    Personally I like the GDPR, and while it might need alteration over time, it does start to to examine the idea that humans ought to be in control of data about them, just as we are often in (some) control of many of the physical items in the world we own. There are rules and regulations, restrictions, and even legal processes that provide recourse over our possessions. Those ought to be extended, and certainly adapted, to digital data, with the corresponding rights that we currently have and perhaps even new ones.
    I think this is going to impact our jobs as data professionals in the future. While we will have more requirements, more hassles from security, and more restrictions, this is also going to ensure that organizations need data professionals for a long time.
    Steve Jones

  • Treat All Sensitive Data as Important

    We know that not all the data in our company is important. We have databases that contain orders or inventory or schedules, often much of which isn’t easily or directly related to an individual. At least, it’s not if you have a normalized database. If you use SQL Server to emulate Excel spreadsheets, it’s possible that most of the rows of information in your system contain sensitive data.

    In some systems, there is definitely some data that is sensitive and needs more care than other data. We know this, and with legislation like the GDPR, we must protect this data. We also need to ensure we know where this data is, and having a good data catalog is important. This is something that few of us have, though I expect this to be a more regular part of our job as data professionals. SQL Server is building data classification into the product, which I am happy to see.

    When data is sensitive, we need to treat it carefully, even if we don’t like the content of the data. Recently there was a data breach from B&Q, a home improvement retailer in the UK, where 70,000 names were lost. These weren’t customers, but rather people that had been caught stealing from the stores. Perhaps this was an honest mistake, on a data store with poor security. Perhaps no one thought this data needed security because these were criminals, or suspected criminals. Even if these were individuals that might be prosecuted by the company, their data still deserves the same protection as any other person’s data.

    I don’t know what the fallout will be from this breach, and certainly most people would have little sympathy for criminals, but who knows just how accurate the data might be. I certainly think this is a situation where there is a high likelihood of legal action against the company if the proper GDPR notifications were not followed. Wouldn’t that insult to injury? People caught or suspected of theft suing you because you leaked their personal information. I could certainly see management getting extra upset and terminating someone that forgot to secure these systems.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Tougher Privacy Laws

    I am all for tougher privacy laws, especially for companies that have not followed basic security practices for securing data. There is a proposal from US Senator Ron Wyden that would increase penalties and give more rights to consumers. Consumers could opt out of data sharing and executives could be fined or jailed. The penalties are stiff, and I think it’s not likely to pass, and more practically, many of the penalties might not actually get enforced.

    In the US we don’t have much in the way of rights over our own data as humans. Companies, for the most part, have complete control over the data they collect about us and can re-use, sell, share, etc. that data in any way they wish. There are some laws concerning notifications of data loss, and some penalties in California’s recent law, but for most of the country, consumers are at the mercy of organizations. I’d like that to change, and I don’t think doing so would hurt most businesses. Aggregators and data only companies might struggle, but I’d like to see less of those companies in business.

    Stronger penalties might stimulate change and better practices, but only if we fine or jail those that limit security efforts. Most technical people try to implement security but are often prevented or limited from making many changes when there is pressure to keep moving forward. Certainly some technical people don’t take security seriously, but I’d like to see employees absolved of responsibility if they show that they have asked for time or resources for security, but those aren’t granted. I’d also like to see some way for management at all levels to prove they have actually requested and funded security efforts, not just remain ignorant of the lack of security. Too many layers of management muddy the waters and often prevent those that are responsible for pushing other work over security from being held accountable. We need more accountability at all levels for poor security.

    Likely there is a limited amount of structure that government can provide. Developers and infrastructure groups need to build and configure secure systems. Some funding needs to be available for security work, along with the time to do better. Management needs to make security a priority It’s a group effort and while I hope we can get there, I’m not terribly confident things will improve soon.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.