Technology has always advanced faster than the laws we rely on to protect ourselves from technology’s misuse. Fears of a super-intelligent artificial intelligence arising that manipulates machines and humans to do its will sound like science fiction, but the incredible speed of AI advances make them anything but. The more immediate threats that AI poses to individuals and businesses […]
The Growing Importance of AI Governance
New technologies often engender fear and foreboding among people outside tech industries. The latest example of this trend is artificial intelligence (AI), which is a topic of much concern and misunderstanding among the public. It’s easy to dismiss these qualms as the common human tendency to mistrust the unknown. However, much of the alarm about AI […]
Common Data Integrity Issues (and How to Overcome Them)
To say data has “integrity” means that it can be trusted and relied upon and is ultimately useful. Data integrity also conveys a sense of unity and completeness. The greatest challenges to ensuring that data has integrity are any characteristics or events that detract from the data’s usefulness, trustworthiness, and reliability, as well as anything […]
What Is a Data Marketplace and Why Does It Matter?
The most successful organizations strive for excellence in their products, their processes, and especially in their workers. Excelling in a profession goes beyond simply meeting short-term and long-term goals to devising and applying creative, innovative solutions. To achieve this level of excellence, companies must provide their workers with the tools that let them convert their […]
Fundamentals of Data Preparation
Data is often called the raw material of the information age, and it does share characteristics with the resources that power other industries. For example, imagine trying to make a car out of unrefined iron ore. A lot of processing happens between the mine and the factory. Data is no different. In its “raw” form, […]
Building an Enterprise Data Strategy: What, Why, How
No matter how good you feel about the reliability of your company’s data operations, you can’t help wondering on occasion what the chances are that your firm will be one of the victims of the next data outage, malware scourge, or cyberattack. This is especially the case if your job entails ensuring the availability of your organization’s […]
What Is Active Metadata and Why Does It Matter?
Metadata is like the secret sauce of the internet. You type a word or phrase in a search engine, press enter, and the information you’re looking for appears (usually). An action that once seemed “indistinguishable from magic,” to quote the third of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws, is now as commonplace as heating up leftovers in […]
Choosing a Data Quality Tool: What, Why, How
Data-driven organizations are in a race to collect the information that modern analytics techniques rely on to generate insights and guide business decisions. The ever-growing flow of data into business systems challenges companies to devise new techniques for ensuring the quality of the data as its quantity skyrockets. Data quality tool vendors are rising to […]
What Is Data Trust and Why Does It Matter?
A batch processing system fails on the eve of a company’s deadline for monthly reports, threatening the accuracy of its financials. One of the two systems powering the dashboard of a global supply chain company crashes, and a manager overbooks a transport ship because it displays inaccurate data, causing a costly delay in a customer’s […]
What Does It Mean to Be Data-Driven?
Businesses succeed or fail based on their ability to make sound decisions. Every aspect of an organization’s operation, from the simplest to the most complex, is the result of a series of decisions, each building on the next, from the chairs in the employee lunch room to the million-dollar marketing campaign that will make or […]