Is Data Science a threat to mankind?

AADI JAIN
4 min readMay 25, 2021

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Data Science is the domain of study that deals with vast volumes of data using modern tools and techniques to find unseen patterns, derive meaningful information, and make business decisions. Data Science uses complex machine learning algorithms to build protective models.
The data used for analysis can be from multiple sources and present in various formats.

In this modern era, every company, brand, corporate, industries like education, airlines, railway and many more are using Data Science in their business and working model. Today, Data Science has become the fundamentals of many companies and no doubt that’s the key factor behind the success of companies.

We have come this so far that are A to Z information say it personal or work, our data is kept in the databases of different industries and we don’t know is it safe or unsafe?
Although, Data Science has created a drastic change in technology like say it Facebook, WhatsApp, Flipkart each brand has an ample of data that they are using in their marketing and to analyze what consumer needs and the difficulties they are facing.

Just like Start-ups that are opening each day, what are they a solutions to the modern world problem not more than that ex. Swiggy, a leisure startup to provide food at home, Ola- No more stress to book cab, OYO- No more bargain on hotel rates and if we look at our surroundings in this way we will see there are lots like this.

Data-driven businesses are worth $1.2 trillion collectively in 2020, an increase from $333 billion in the year 2015. Data scientists are responsible for breaking down big data into usable information and creating software and algorithms that help companies and organizations determine optimal operations. As big data continues to have a major impact on the world, data science does as well due to the close relationship between the two.

Now, this is the white side of Data Science but the data that we stores or analyze, is it actually safe?

Data Breach Targets
Business data only becomes a target when it is of value to a third party. Different kinds of data are more or less valuable to third parties and represent different levels of risk to a business. The different types of data include the following:

Personally Identifiable Information
This includes data such as social security numbers, contact information, birth dates, education and other personal information.

Financial Information
This includes charge card numbers and expiry dates, bank accounts, investment details and similar data.

Health Information
This includes details on health conditions, prescription drugs, treatments and medical records.

Intellectual Property
This includes product drawings and manuals, specifications, scientific formulas, marketing texts and symbols, proprietary software and other material that the business has developed.

Competition Information
This includes data on competitors, market studies, pricing information and business plans.

Legal Information
This includes documentation on court cases the company may be pursuing, legal opinions on business practices, merger and acquisition details and regulatory rulings.

IT Security Data
This includes lists of user names and passwords, encryption keys, security strategies and network structure.

These types of information attract the attention of third parties for whom the data has value. Personal, financial and health information can be sold and used for marketing, fraud and identity theft. Intellectual property can be sold and used to develop products and services similar to those of your business. Competitive information can be sold and used by your competitors to block your plans and leaked legal information may damage your legal position. Data on IT security is a valuable target in itself because it lets the unauthorized parties gain access to all the other types of information on your system.

And these data breaches can be very dangerous and critical for mankind as personal data can be used against us in a very wrong way.
About 3.5 billion people saw their personal data stolen in the top two of 15 biggest breaches of this century alone. The smallest incident on this list involved the data of a mere 134 million people.

As the most recent example we have of Air India and leak of personal and banking data of passengers can be very harmful.

Data Breach at Air India

So, still it remains the dilemma that giving Data to companies is safe or not?
No matter how cyber security or firewall company has still stealers hacked every big company once a time.

Comment your views on this.

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AADI JAIN
AADI JAIN

Written by AADI JAIN

A learner, who learn things and try to express my learning by writing it down. Trying to be a good engineer :)