Data collaborations

Challenges & Opportunities of the future in data collaboration. 
- an nSpire article by Kasper J H Ditlevsen

Enterprises are increasingly noticing the importance for expanding their access to data through 3rd party partnership eco-systems to create new advantages and opportunities for growth. Most enterprises do not generate the necessary levels of data on their own, to derive the holistic and neutral actionable insights required to provide new experiences, open new revenue streams and apply new improved operating and business models. This article serves to shed light on some of the challenges, opportunities and solutions appearing. 

World Economic Forum calls this opportunity for The Next Breakthrough in Economies, where:

  • 84%                                                                                                                                               - of company values are intangible assets, mostly data.
  • >40%                                                                                                                                              - of companies develop data collaborations with other companies.
  • 1/3rd                                                                                                                                             - of global GDP will be created in networking companies by 2025.
  • $60 trillion                                                                                                                                    - is the total estimated revenue of networked economy by 2025.

Data collaboration
Data collaboration is the process of sharing and combining data from different sources to gain insights or solve problems. Here are some examples of data collaboration:

1. Healthcare: Health data from multiple hospitals or clinics can be combined to create a more comprehensive understanding of patient needs, disease prevalence, and treatment outcomes.

2. Research: Scientific researchers can collaborate by sharing data from their experiments or studies, allowing for more comprehensive analyses and deeper insights.

3. Smart Cities: Data from various sources, such as traffic sensors, weather stations, and public transportation, can be combined to improve traffic flow, reduce congestion, and enhance public safety.

4. Supply Chain Management: Data collaboration can help improve supply chain visibility, optimise inventory levels, and reduce wastage. For example, manufacturers can collaborate with their suppliers to track the movement of raw materials and finished goods throughout the supply chain.

5. Financial Services: Banks and other financial institutions can collaborate by sharing data to identify fraud patterns, detect money laundering activities, and improve credit risk assessments.

6. Social Services: Data collaboration can be used to improve social services such as education, housing, and welfare. For example, school districts can share student performance data to identify best practices and improve student outcomes.

Overall, data collaboration can lead to more comprehensive insights, more accurate predictions, and better decision-making. However, it also raises significant privacy and security concerns, which must be addressed through the use of appropriate data governance frameworks and technologies.

Data monetisation
Data monetisation refers to the process of generating revenue or value from data assets. It involves the identification, collection, analysis, and exploitation of data to create new products, services, or revenue streams. Here are some examples of data monetisation:

* Data as a product: Organisations can package their data and sell it as a product to other companies or individuals. This can include customer data, market research, or even anonymised data for research purposes.

* Analytics as a service: Organisations can provide data analytics services to customers, using their data to provide insights, predictions, or recommendations.

* Advertising: Companies can use customer data to target ads more effectively, resulting in higher conversion rates and revenue.

* Product development: Companies can use customer data to identify trends and insights, enabling them to develop new products or services that better meet customer needs.

* Strategic partnerships: Companies can collaborate with other organisations to share data and insights, enabling both parties to generate new revenue streams or improve existing products and services.

It is important to note that data monetisation also raises significant ethical and legal considerations, such as data privacy, security, and ownership. Organisations must ensure that they are complying with applicable laws and regulations, and that they are protecting customer data from unauthorised access or misuse. Additionally, organisations must also be transparent with their customers about how their data is being used, and give them the option to opt out of data collection or sharing.


A Cookieless world
The term "cookieless world" refers to a future where web browsers no longer support third-party cookies, which are small text files that are stored on a user's device and used to track their browsing behaviour. This shift is being driven by increased concerns over privacy and data protection, as well as changes in data protection regulations such as #GDPR and #CCPA.

While the shift towards a cookieless world is intended to enhance privacy and security, it also creates several challenges for online businesses and advertisers. Here are some of the key challenges:

1. Targeted Advertising: Third-party cookies have been used extensively to track user behaviour across different websites and build detailed profiles of users for targeted advertising. In a cookieless world, advertisers and publishers will need to find new ways to deliver targeted ads to users, such as using contextual targeting, which involves targeting ads based on the content of the web page, rather than on individual user behaviour.

2. Measurement and Attribution: Without third-party cookies, it will be more difficult for advertisers and publishers to track the effectiveness of their ad campaigns and attribute conversions to specific ads or channels. This may require new measurement techniques and standards, such as using first-party data, attribution modeling, and alternative tracking technologies.

3. User Experience: In a cookieless world, users may experience a more fragmented and disjointed browsing experience, as websites and services struggle to provide personalised content and recommendations without the use of third-party cookies. This may require new approaches to user experience design and personalisation, such as using contextual data and machine learning algorithms.

Overall, the shift towards a cookieless world is likely to have significant implications for online businesses, advertisers, and users. While it may enhance privacy and security, it also presents several challenges that must be addressed through new technologies, standards, and best practices.

Confidential computing in context of external data collaborations
Confidential computing refers to a set of technologies and practices that aim to protect sensitive data and computations from unauthorised access, both while the data is in transit and at rest, and while the computations are being performed. It involves encrypting data and computations using various techniques, such as homomorphic encryption, secure enclaves, and trusted execution environments (#tees).

Data sharing, on the other hand, involves the sharing of data between different parties, such as organisations or individuals. Data sharing can be beneficial for various reasons, such as improving collaboration, facilitating research, and enabling better decision-making. However, data sharing also raises significant privacy and security concerns, as sensitive data may be exposed to unauthorised access or misuse.

Confidential computing can help address some of these concerns by enabling secure data sharing. For example, by using homomorphic encryption, data can be encrypted in such a way that it can still be processed by other parties without the need for decryption, thus reducing the risk of data exposure. Similarly, TEEs can be used to protect data and computations while they are being processed, reducing the risk of unauthorised access.

Overall, confidential computing and data sharing are both important concepts in today's data-driven world. While there are challenges associated with both, advancements in technology and best practices can help mitigate these challenges and enable secure and responsible data sharing.

Methodologies
Privacy Preserving Computation (#PPC) methodologies are a group of ultramodern cybersecurity methodologies that, rather than aiming to safeguarding data from unauthorised parties gaining access, they look at data can be represented in a form that can be shared, analysed and used without exposing the raw data and information.
Encryption methods frequently form the core of how PPC methodologies give these capabilities, however they are being used slightly different than usual. Usually, encryption is used to ensure safekeeping and integrity of sensitive data against unauthorised access, while in transit between parties and while at rest.

Although encryption provides a reasonable protection from outside attacks in transit, to reuse the data, the data recipient must have access to the keys to decrypt that data.

Popular PPC techniques gaining traction
Trusted Execution Environment (Secure Enclave):
An environment with special hardware modules that allow for data processing within hardware provided, encrypted private memory areas directly on the microprocessor chip only accessible to the running process.

Differential Privacy:
A data obfuscation mechanism—often used with other traditional anonymisation or de-identification techniques—that allows broad statistical information to be gathered and inferred from data without the actual specifics of individual items being exposed.

Homomorphic Encryption:
A technology that enables computation on encrypted data without the need to decrypt it first (or at all). In this way, the sensitive data are encrypted and protected at all stages of transport and processing.

Secure Multi Party Computation (MPC):
A technology that provides a mechanism that allows a group of parties to share the benefits of combining their data to create useful outputs while keeping their actual source data private from each other.

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