VTech hack in Hong Kong sees industry experts urge firms to lean more on big data to boost cybersecurity
Experts see big data as a means to boost information security among Hong Kong companies, an issue that has come to the fore in the wake of a huge data breach at local toymaker VTech.
VTech said Monday that its database was hacked, exposing five million customer accounts, mostly belonging to parents, and the profiles of nearly 6.4 million kids worldwide.
But experts say that firms can harness big data to further protect people's privacy by taking into account patterns produced by their information technology equipment. This would minimise the unnecessary storage of data and make less data anonymous, they claim.
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Data centre equipment, databases, software programmes and even email services are constantly producing logs that keep track of the activity and movement of data, said Ronald Raffensperger, chief technology officer for data centre solutions at Chinese smartphone and electronics maker Huawei.
“You can start seeing when people are doing things that they shouldn’t,” he said.
“And you can find out who is accessing that information and raise flags.”
“In food delivery, we know how much you ordered, how frequently, and how much you spend,” said Kwong.
“But by anonymising this data and using it to [identify] trends, it [resolves the privacy issue],” he added.
Kwong said it is important to set clear parameters of what companies are permitted to do with the data in order to protect people’s privacy.
Mark Chan, managing partner of digital marketing firm CMRS Digital Solutions, said his company ensures security by crossing various data sets to create a different set of data points. This new data is then assessed in real-time rather than stored on the company’s database.