Building digital trust: the role of data ethics in the digital age

The digital economy is built on data—massive streams of data being created, collected, combined and shared—for which traditional governance frameworks and risk-mitigation strategies are insufficient. In the digital age, analyzing and acting on insights from data can introduce entirely new classes of risk. These include unethical or even illegal use of insights, amplifying biases that exacerbate issues of social and economic justice, and using data for purposes to which its original disclosers would not have agreed, and without their consent. These and other practices can permanently damage consumer trust in a brand. In the past, the scope for digital risk was limited to cybersecurity threats but leading organizations must now also recognize risks from lacklustre ethical data practices. Mitigating these internal threats is critical for every player in the digital economy, and cannot be addressed with strong cybersecurity alone. Accenture Labs launched a research collaboration with leading thinkers on data ethics to help provide guidelines for security executives and data practitioners and enable development of robust ethical controls throughout data supply chains