Have you ever tried to use your data to streamline your business processes? Maybe you figured out you have zero customers in Dubuque, Iowa, and decided to allocate marketing dollars to Cedar Rapids, all because you asked your data. It’s hard to imagine business decisions large and small being made these days without consulting the data, but therein lies the expanding challenge of protecting the privacy of your users, the real faces of the ones and zeros running through your network at breakneck speed.

Take scooters, for instance. No, seriously, if you get the chance, take a scooter. Through an app on your phone, you can find, fund, and ride a scooter and change the world in the same way that ride sharing companies have done in the last decade or so. To manage that fleet of scooters, though, companies like Bird, Lime, and Uber depend on user data. That’s how they know where and when to deploy scooters based on use, demand, and opportunity. As reported in Motherboard, though, the practice is not without controversy.

Only a Luddite would think we could ever stuff the digital genie back in the bottle. A great bumper sticker might read, “You’ll Pry This iPhone From My Cold Dead Hands.” But the need to wrestle with the issue of privacy isn’t going away either, even though the human part of that equation seems to be on the losing end of the spectrum.

If you have questions about securing the data of your clients and users, call ICS today. We can speak privately.