Learning to Love Data Science

Chapter 9. Can Data Security and Rapid Business Innovation Coexist?

Topline Summary

It’s difficult to be creative when someone’s looking over your shoulder. Is it really possible to strike a balance between innovation, security, governance, and compliance? Interviews with experts from a variety of industries suggest that achieving a balance is possible, but difficult. Some observers believe that balance is the wrong word, since it implies a state in which all parties are equally satisfied. The proper goal, they say, is harmony.

In many ways, the quest for balance or harmony reflects the immaturity of big data culture. To paraphrase one source in this report, nobody expected big data to catch on as quickly as it did, and as a result, few organizations took the time to think through the consequences of shifting from older to newer styles of data management. For better or worse, the transition has proved revolutionary.

This report was written in the autumn of 2014 and released at the O’Reilly Strata + Hadoop World conference at the Javits Center in New York City.

Finding a Balance

During the final decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, many companies learned the hard way that launching an ERP system was more than a matter of acquiring new technology. Successful ERP deployments, it turned out, also required hiring new people and developing new processes.

After a series of multimillion-dollar misadventures at major corporations, it became apparent that ...