Big Data is “octagonal” to security and in conflict with the European approach to privacy.
Speaking at the Trust in the Digital World conference in Vienna, Professor Bart Preneel from the Catholic University Leuven said that while there are some security companies based in Europe, the majority are in the US and Governments often fall behind.
He said: “We should stop Big Data and keep it local as it cannot work with democratic models. If we do this companies will act rationally and stop collecting it.”
Asked to expand on his point, Preneel said that some will claim it can be secure, but no perfect system exists and nothing to stop Governments who can ask for it. “But for companies it is not a problem, they can deliver services and the security industry is based in Big Data then it is easier to keep people secure,” he said.
Reinhard Posch, CIO of the Austrian Federal Government said that there is a need to separate services from providers, as only a small amount of data is relevant. “When it comes to open data – this is by definition open to anyone. If you have a model of data that by design separates types of data into your services, it overloads but keep everything under your control.”
Posch claimed that the view on security and Big Data was schizophrenic as in Austria, medical data belongs to patient but in Germany, it belongs to doctor. “Google predicted the upcoming of bird flu and used data, it could not have if it didn’t own the data or had the right to do so and be able to solve things,” he said.
Christien Polster, chief strategy officer at Radar-Services, said that using Big Data is the best example to identify backdoors. “We use mass network traffic and small packets go to the US and we identify with Big Data analysis where communication is to outlets. This is a good use case in company to give more security,” he said.
