How Weightless Data Impacts Data Security

By now, we’re all aware that many of the platforms and services we use collect and store information about our data usage. Afterall, they want to provide us with the most personalized experience.

So when I read that an EU Tinder user requested information about her data and was sent 800 pages, I was very intrigued with the comment from Luke Stark, a digital technology sociologist at Dartmouth University, “Apps such as Tinder are taking advantage of a simple emotional phenomenon; we can’t feel data. This is why seeing everything printed strikes you. We are physical creatures. We need materiality.”

He is on to something. We don’t usually consider archiving stale data until we’re out of space. It is often through printing photos, docs, spreadsheets, and pdfs that we would feel the weight and space consuming nature of the data we own.

Stark’s description of data’s intangible quality led me to wonder how weightless data impacts how we think about data security.

For instance, when there’s a power outage, some IT departments aren’t deemed important enough to be on a generator. Or when Infosec is often seen as a compliance requirement, not as security. Another roadblock security pros often face is when they report a security vulnerability – it’s not usually well received.

Podcast panelists: Cindy Ng, Mike Buckbee, Kilian Englert, Mike Thompson