Will Data Privacy spark the next Wave of Innovative Applications?

Privacy is a top agenda as we live in an era where data is a fundamental requirement to access healthcare, education, financial facilities, commercial services, employment, security, welfare, social networks, media and even exercise voting rights. Everything around us is designed to optimise and improve by harnessing data, that it has become an undeniable asset with unprecedented utility. 

This makes data a prime heist for unethical hackers and modern day criminals who steal, doctor and manipulate it for illicit purposes including financial gain, scams, terrorism, identity theft, spreading fake news or spying. Some notable breaches from 2018 are the Aadhar breach involving a staggering 1.1 billion records, forum site Quora, Googleplus, Facebook, several airlines and other online entities.

This is why many large corporations that gauge petabytes of user data are under heavy scrutiny by privacy enforcers and regulators such as National data protection authorities in the European Union through the much debated GDPR guideline. For instance a recent announcement by one of Alphabets subsidiary, Sidewalk Lab on a plan to package and sell cellphone data for various service enhancement sparked outrage from various ethics observer and human rights groups, even when the company justified that the unique identifiers will be removed from the dataset.

Staying connected at all time and living somewhat transparently, is the future reality...

But harnessing data is an unavoidable exercise when it comes to achieving greater quality of life, good decisions and optimal utilisation of natural resources.  As such, refraining from the internet, social networks, online media and performing digital transactions will only result in disadvantages, inconvenience and missed values from economic, social and safety standpoints.

Even if we successfully retained a mysterious existence, we will not be free from unwarranted surveillance by both businesses, independent institutions and governments in public places for various reasons as cities, buildings and public amenities become embedded with sensors, camera feeds and chips that connects to the Internet or clouds to perpetually collect data and create values.

Privacy in Asia....

Asia witnessed multiple incidents of data breach last year among CSPs, healthcare providers, financial service providers and even government sources that lead the public to question credibility of domestic institutions in protecting personal, usage and behavioural data. According to a report by Gemalto, Asia Pacific region contributed to over 35% of cybersecurity incidents last year. 

In most cases, institutions took no further action to restore user confidence apart from the breach announcement, which is a mandatory compliance requirement. Gemalto further stated that the numbers could have been much higher in reality, due to unreported incidents especially in Southeast Asia. Singapore is an exception to this as the authorities take great pride in concluding data breach cases successfully to safeguard the regional digital economy.

Asia also suffers from an overall weaker legal framework and laws for privacy though dedicated privacy task force is emerging in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines, out of which Singapore perhaps is the most advanced in ratifying and enforcing the aforesaid laws. 

At the same time, there is a rise in governments that are explicitly developing and extending state surveillance under the pretext of national agenda, security and cyber crime laws for political reasons. Technologies such as facial recognition, artificial intelligence, biometric, advanced identity card systems, ever increasing compute capacities and various citizen facing applications are converging into social scoring systems that provides granular monitoring of individuals, regardless of their consent. 

But there is a new way to tackle privacy - a new form of application architecture is on the rise .....

Apart from comprehensive legal framework, enforcements and the use of advance security architectures, strategies and tools, the application design and architecture itself can serve as a mechanism to protect privacy by separating personal data and identities from applications.

For instance, a project led by Led by Tim Berners-Lee called 'Solid' and is currently run from MIT, consist a set of tools and conventions that helps to preserve integrity of identities, privacy and data ownership while enabling developers and businesses create a new wave of innovative web applications. Solid is a web decentralisation project that aims to put rightful ownership of data back to every users and empower applications that are completely decentralised. 

Currently the use cases are limited for developer community alone, though discussions on Solid servers and tools are beginning to emerge in Quora, Reddit, FB Groups and GitHub.

Similarly Digi.me and HAT are all projects aiming to decentralised applications on the web, where users can create libraries of their data and is completely in control of how the data is used by corporations and governments.

Privacy concerns will lead to new opportunities ....

Most large businesses perceive privacy as a critical challenge to overcome with growing pressure from regulators. Though regulators approach are not helping as solutions developed around privacy laws are difficult and expensive to attain technically, especially for Internet giants.

In the end, solution might just emerge from the tech world itself through new architectures and business models lead by smart startups willing to embark on new frontiers such as Solid, Digi.me and HAT to develop fully decentralised applications that satisfy users, businesses and regulators.

Larger companies might use 'business within business' approach to innovate in the privacy space or quickly get onto the new themes through acquisitions, mergers and rethinking business models. On the another note, decentralised web may lead to even larger paradigm shift, similar to the ones we experienced when organisations moved from on-premise to cloud of everything, creating new digital eco-systems altogether. The one thing that no one can afford to do, is to remain unchanged.

Let's Kopi IP Series – Featuring Codename.biz by Trytec Malaysia

Paper based Business Cards are now Officially Obsolete

Most successful business professionals are fervent networkers and constantly keep an eye out for new talents, potential customers, partnerships, investors and other useful contacts that can be cleverly leveraged to achieve growth objectives. In a fast moving business, executives routinely fill work calendars with professional events, calls and business meetings where new connections are initiated, usually through exchange of paper based business cards, that may be followed by LinkedIn invitations.

However managing and maintaining large number of contacts using this method over time can turn counter productive as executives move organisations, change career path, get promoted, shift to a different region or simply relocate to a new office.

The use of online tools in creating modern professional branding..

Paper based business cards are unable to capture and link to online profiles nor can the contact details presented, altered without reprinting.  Even when business cards are digitised by card scanners, such systems do not necessarily prompt an automatic connect to online profiles owned by card holders. The card formats vary and are not always an exact match for the mobile contact list, resulting in missing information during information capturing process. When there is a change in address, mobile number, email, company or new links such as blog or video is added, the paper based card has to be reprinted and redistributed to keep the network updated.

Codename.biz is a Virtual Business Card Platform 

Online networking, collaboration and content sharing platforms such as LinkedIn, Workspace, Reddit, Twitter, Quora, blogs, online professional groups and YouTube are changing the way professional profiles are composed and orchestrated. The new age workforce actively utilises multiple online avenues to creatively add personification, demonstrate leadership, command specialisation and keep

professional branding relevant with current market, industry and business trends.

Codename.biz by Trytec addresses this challenge and simplifies the process of creating, sharing and updating virtual calling cards that includes additional online branding assets to various business networks simultaneously in realtime. Users can use a single cloud interface to create business contact information with links to social media profiles, websites, blogs, videos and other multimedia content that describes the business and expertise best.

The virtual business card is available in different colours and designs, easily shared via mobile, email or other messaging tools such as WhatsApp or Messenger.

QR codes are generated for users to facilitate connections by simply scanning the code using the mobile camera. Trytec is currently expanding on this idea and considering options to print the QR codes in the form of costume jewelries and watches to promote usability and convenience.

It’s only a matter of time before the traditional calling cards are abandoned…

Traditional calling cards are becoming less relevant as we move into a highly connected work environment where the lines of professional, social and personal lives are beginning to assimilate. Systems and algorithms are amassing data continuously on netizens to generate various types of scores on social, commercial and professional contributions. Making a novel online presence and an original personal branding, a crucial prerequisite for attracting business opportunities.

The simplicity of Codename.biz can turn it into the next de-facto method for presenting contact information and identity to business networks. It offers a compelling value to users by binding all critical professional branding assets in one place with features to add or edit sources in real time without complicating the virtual profile with a resume style outline.

Be an early adopter, try the beta NOW

Codename.biz is currently in beta run as work to lift user experience and robustness of the platform are carried out behind the scene with more user feedbacks becoming available. In the mean time, users are encouraged to take advantage of the free service period to try out the service.