Tackling personal data and trust with SOTER

We live in the era of the conscious consumer. People are asking more of brands and they’re aware when a brand’s behaviour breaches their sense of ethics. Businesses are subject to greater judgment than ever, and the public deliver their verdicts with their wallets.

One way this trend manifests itself is in terms of personal data and trust. The public’s increasing awareness of data protection issues is bolstered by the arrival of data protection regulations such as California’s CCPA, the European Union’s GDPR and Brazil’s LGPD. A 2019 study from Pew Research Center found that 81% of Americans felt a lack of control over their data collected by companies. 79% also said they were concerned over how that data is used.

This presents savvy businesses with an opportunity: make data protection an asset, a point of pride or even a unique selling point (USP). Become a consumer champion, or a business that other businesses trust with their custom. In this article, we’ll explore how data protection and trust are a priority in the development and use of the SOTER tools, and the potential benefits for businesses who embrace data protection.

The SOTER project is developing a Digital Onboarding Platform to enhance cybersecurity practices within the financial services industry. With its privacy-by-design and security-by-design approach, the Platform has the potential to be an incredibly powerful tool in efforts to further protect data subjects and increase resilience in the financial services sector.

Tackle personal data and trust with SOTER

SOTER is changing the way banks deal with customers’ personal data, from the moment they onboard through the entire lifecycle of their relationship. Using Trunomi, a proprietary privacy technology, SOTER brings together all the information a bank needs about the data they hold for each customer, so they know exactly what they’re dealing with.

A patented technology, called TruCert, provides an immutable record of consent and permissions – when it was provided, by whom, and what the data was taken for – so compliance becomes a failsafe, automated process. And, because Trunomi’s technology uses metadata about end-customer data to provide records of what they’re storing, the bank can review, manipulate, and transmit those records when needed – not the actual sensitive personal data itself. Total visibility and control without the risk of compromising the very privacy and trust banks are protecting in the first place.

It’s all achieved using Trunomi’s simple and quick-to-deploy API. We want banks to be able to master personal data and trust right away, without dedicating excessive time or people-resources. We know businesses want to seize the day and the advantage in a competitive world.

Data protection can be a win-win situation

There are a lot of benefits for businesses who master personal data and trust.

• You keep your customer a customer
• You enhance and protect your brand
• It has tangible benefits for the business and its workflows

The Cisco 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study found 42% of respondents indicated that their privacy investments “enabled agility and innovation”. Data protection fears and risks are no longer holding businesses back from making the moves they need to grow, disrupt and move forward into the future.

Your challenge: achieving full data visibility

To make data protection truly work for your organisation, visibility is key. You need to know exactly what data you hold for each customer: their identity, the type of data you hold, its purpose, where it’s stored, and when the customer provided their consent for you to have it.

This is easier said than done, as a range of personnel and disparate information systems are often involved in personal data collection and handling processes, and the greater the complexity and moving parts, the greater the potential for bottlenecks, errors and data going unaccounted for.

And, when dealing with personal data, businesses always have to take the utmost care not to breach customer privacy and the regulations surrounding it. This is why personal data and trust have been an issue many businesses haven’t been able to tackle head-on yet.

Ready to become a data protection champion?

SOTER treats data protection as an asset, not a liability. We want to help you make personal data and trust a point of pride, something your business will shout from the rooftops. Using the highest standard in Privacy technology for SOTER, banks in Europe are becoming data protection champions. With SOTER’s help, so can you.

For more information about SOTER visit the project website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Author: Alexa Mackenzie, Trunomi