Management Critical thinking

Big Data is Opening Doors
Author
Institution

Abstract
Big data refers to the process of collecting large volumes of data which might either be organized or unorganized. The data is then processed to provide useful information that can be used in various industries to improve different services and products. Technological advancement, especially in the smartphone sector, has resulted in the development of a wide range of applications some of which collect data. For examples, in the healthcare sector information obtained from patients can be used to indicate how certain medications affect different people, therefore, paving the way for improvement. In the transport industry, information gathered with the help of applications showing the location of the users can be used to determine roads experiencing heavy traffic through analyzing the speed of the users and number of devices in particular area; this makes it possible to provide other drivers with alternative routes which are less congested. However, in some situation, applications can be used to collect more information than required resulting in privacy violation, the research below focusses on solutions that can be used to solve these problems.
Keywords: Big data, security, data, information.

Big Data is Opening Doors
Amazon has been using big data for a long time. The company pioneered the e-commerce industry in many ways. However, one of its most significant innovation is the creation of a recommendation system that suits each customer; this was made possible by concepts of big data.

Data from millions of its users is collected allowing the company to provide customers with the most suitable suggestions for various products and services. According to a research conducted by Bernard Marr, when people are offered either products or services they might like, they get strong desires to buy them even though the items might not fulfill any real need (Marr, 2014). Big data is the main reason that has allowed Amazon to become one of the most successful companies in the world.
Big data provides a wide variety of benefits, especially for company owners. For example, advertising different services and products can be costly. Information collected through big data can be implemented to determine the type of advertisements that are most suitable for a particular population or even age group; this is referred to as target marketing. The article by Steve Lohr “Big data is opening doors but maybe too many doors” relates to the aspect that big data is allowing companies to achieve success by providing useful information while at the same time interfering with the privacy of the users who are the source of the data.
Privacy issues have been in existence since the 1960s after the creation of mainframes computers which were used in the banking industry. People were concerned that computerization of the sector would result in the exposure of financial information of millions of people; this led to the creation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that was enacted in 1970 (Lohr, 2013). The law permitted collection of financial data under the condition that the information was restricted for use under three main areas, that is, employment, credit, and insurance.
The issue of privacy in big data has resulted in the suggestion of various solutions. One of the methods to handle this issue as suggested by Dr. Pentland, an adviser at World Economic Forum’s initiative is equipping the user with the ability to possess their data, distribute it, control how it is used or even destroy it (Lohr, 2013). Another method to solve the problem is through the use of tag software codes which provides users with preferences on how their data is used. Also, all the purposes for collecting data have to be registered, and the use of the information has to be limited. For example, smartphone applications registered for services such as restaurant finders or games should not store data that is not related to these services. Violation of these regulations should result in penalties. According to Ingrid Lunden from TechCrunch, large organizations that implement the use of big data such as Microsoft, Apple and Google have come up with differential privacy services to ensure the data of their users is secure (Lunden, 2017). The differential approach uses techniques such as encryption of data to make it unreadable to hackers in case it is stolen through security breaches. Data that is unreadable is useless to the online thieves.
Collecting information through big data provides a wide range of benefits for members of the society and organizations. However, there is need to come up with regulations to ensure that different organizations do not collect more data than necessary. Also, the gathered information should not be used inappropriately.

References
Lohr, S. (2013). Big Data Is Opening Doors, but Maybe Too Many. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/technology/big-data-and-a-renewed-debate-over-privacy.htmlLunden, I. (2017). Privitar raises $16M to help ensure privacy in big data analytics. TechCrunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/18/privitar-raises-16m-to-help-ensure-privacy-in-big-data-analytics/Marr, B. (2014). How Amazon Uses Big Data to Boost Its Performance. SmartDataCollective. Retrieved from https://www.smartdatacollective.com/how-amazon-uses-big-data-boost-its-performance/