After watching the movie “Enemy of the State’ on Netflix last night, I woke up thinking about “Data”.  While admittedly an odd thing to wake up to, a quick read of the news stories of the day only reinforced the subject.  Data – usually accompanied by the word ‘big’ is indeed a trending topic of the 21st century.

What exactly are we talking about when we talk about big data?  Big data is essentially the collection, collation, and assumed use of information about almost anything you can imagine.  It’s a central feature for financial institutions, cell phone companies, retail businesses, and defense and intelligence agencies.  New smart city initiatives collect data on neighborhood and individual water and electricity usage in hopes of changing user behavior by providing real-time feedback.  It ranges from cameras in the eyes of department store mannequins (to assess customer reaction to them) to cameras in unmanned drone aircraft flying over Iraq and Afghanistan.

And just how big is big?  Walmart, for example collects the equivalent of about 60 million five-drawer file cabinets worth of data every hour.  The unmanned drones flying over Iraq and Afghanistan sent back more than 24 years worth of video (if watched simultaneously) in 2009.  All-in-all, an estimated 1,200 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data was created by mankind in 2010 and the amount grows exponentially each year.

Setting aside the obvious question of what, if anything can actually be done with this much information, a more important issue is at stake.  How is it being protected?  Indeed, for every story about big data there are an equal number of stories about privacy breaches, hacking and cyber attacks.

Companies and governments around the world are entering what has been termed a new IT-arms race.  The U.S., UK, China and Japan are reportedly spending on average more than US$ 1 million per day on securing their IT and other sensitive information.  In addition to guarding against data theft by cyber attacks, governments also realize that privacy and data protection are now major requirements in order to establish the necessary level of certainty that is essential for investment and trade to flourish. Companies now must put government dedication to high data protection standards and the institutions that ensure their enforcement high on the top of their list when they decide when, where and how to do business.

Thinking back to “Enemy of the State” and the ease with which the bad guys were able to obtain and misuse data – while it’s only a movie – learning to cope with and protect the deluge of data is assuredly essential.