Why data management is more than privacy compliance — Gowthaman “G’man” Ragothaman // Aqilliz

Quotes

• “Aqilliz focuses on safe and secure usage of customer data. Typically what happens is every enterprise owns their own data sets. But equally in this new world of marketing, what you don’t own as an important password you own in terms of data sets and more than two thirds () of the data is being bought out to enrich the profiles.” - Gowthaman“In the world of GDPR and CCPA complaints, the external data that you use to enrich your profile need to be as much compliant as your own data set. So we help companies manage it very well.” - Gowthaman“So there’s the difference between first party and third party data and most companies are using a blend of the two. Customers are coming into your website giving you name, email address you’re using ClearBit to get a company address and all the other information about who else works in the company. You need to make sure not only your data is compliant but the other resources that you’re using for enrichment are compliant as well.” - Ben “Typically, enterprises have a data management platform and they are now progressing towards customer data platforms (CDP) and then moving to another situation where a CDP also needs to maintain consent, so there's a consent management platform. Companies who use first-party data need to maintain a record of the consent they have from the consumers for activating them.” - Gowthaman“Similarly, every enterprise needs to maintain a record of the consent that they have received from the consumers in their own enterprises and when they share that information for activation, everytime something is changing to the consent both of them need to maintain a record of the changes being made to it.” - Gowthaman“Consent is not limited to only one enterprise, consent is universal because one day it can be used by multiple enterprises and that’s where the challenge comes in. We provide that universal distributed consent of the consumer across all these different enterprises.” - Gowthaman“So, for instance, I, Ben Shapiro go to AT&T and say, “I want a phone number, here’s my address, my credit card information, and here’s my name and social security number. By the way, I’m a subscriber to the New York Times, here’s my email address and you’re able to collect data on what content I’m interested in but I’ve never told AT&T that they can have consent to understand what content I’m interested in for using in selling me new products and services.” - Ben“But there is potentially a data exchange between the New York Times and AT&T and I did accept both their privacy policy, so where does it break down? What am I consenting to? And where’s the line where they can’t share data?” - Ben “It’s the obligation by the enterprise to provide what’s been done with your data.” - Gowthaman“Both AT&T and the New York Times need to maintain a record of contacting me in their consent management platform. That’s the compliance.” - Gowthaman“The regulations now want the T&C’s to be consumer-friendly and not legalese. Those terms also maintain that you have to maintain a record of what’s been done on your data.” - Gowthaman“That’s where we come in with our distributed ledger technology that whenever an activity is being done, we provide them a common ledger and it is simultaneously updated but neither of them can own it because there will be bias of trust.” - Gowthaman“So it’s similar to how bitcoin operates where there’s a blockchain, there’s an independent ledger that is being kept of all of these transactions. Now in your case, it’s not a bitcoin was sent from this person to this person and its consent was given by this consumer for this website and you have a record of all of the consents across all the various websites.” - Ben“Yes, but also our technology ensures that the data never leaves the data’s native location. We just maintain a record in their own vault in their own companies. We don’t maintain a server.” - Gowthaman“So like AT&T is not sharing your personal information with Aqiliz and then Aqiliz is not sharing that information with the New York Times. You are just recording that there was consent and what type of consent it was.” - Ben “Cookies are used to track a consumer’s journey on the web so that they can be served the ads. Cookies are the connecting tissue between many computers and many networks and that means and that means that cookies are literally surviving the internet as it is today.” - Gowthaman“The technology which we used right now which would  track an individual to the cookie is only 50% effective because there are some guesses that happen even when the cookies are dead. The problem with cookies is, it doesn’t record the consent. That is why it is failing and that is why it is not compliant.” - Gowthaman“When cookies go away, the consent is going back to their respective entities, so the internet as we speak today as an open web is under a question mark of how do I talk  to each other? How do I connect and how do I build a business network of computers. That’s where the problem comes in.” - Gowthaman“We need to find a way in which the network of computers across the enterprises are able to share information in a collaborative manner for the benefit of the open web.” - Gowthaman“It seems like the concept of decentralized data management and privacy compliance makes a lot of sense. Mostly as we start thinking about better understanding of how companies are collecting data, do they have consent to use it? As the light shines on marketers and consumers’ privacy concerns are being aired, having a decentralized private record makes a lot of sense.” - Ben