Making smart business decisions is dependent on a company’s ability to use its data effectively.

Internal company data has a lot to offer. However, in a world of complex connections and a fast-growing ocean of accessible data, it is naïve to think that useful and competitive information can be harvested without benefiting from external data sources. As more and more data becomes available, businesses are developing a new way of thinking.

Matching external sources to internal data becomes an entity resolution and data linkage question, and it’s one that businesses in every industry are struggling to answer. …

Since July 2018, over €274M in fines have been enforced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation. The lion’s share of these ( more than €228M ) are for “insufficient legal basis for data processing” and “insufficient technical and organizational measures to ensure information security,” which implies that the majority of offending organizations lack critical policy and infrastructure components to make them compliant.

These penalties are part of the first wave of a new regulatory reality; a response to decades of Wild West practices that led to rampant misuse of personal data and data infrastructure designed to bring data in…

The world of personal data is no longer ungoverned. Sweeping and far-reaching legislation has cracked down on how companies handle data. These changes are necessary to safeguard the future of digital privacy; however, businesses small and large are forced to make major changes they may not be equipped to enact with their current data infrastructure.

Can I become GDPR compliant without having to completely reconfigure my business?

GDPR: The Basics

On a very high level, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs whose data you can hold, how it’s stored, and what has to happen in case of a breach. …

There are a lot of ways to have fun with data. The breadth of information that’s available can lead to some outrageous analysis, like why vegetarians miss fewer flights or the famous Spurious Correlations website. At ThinkData, we celebrate the fun stuff — but we also take the serious stuff seriously. That’s why we made it a priority to become SOC 2 certified.

Can’t data security be fun, too?

That’s a fair point, data security can be fun — provided you’re on the winning side, following the rules and best practices. If not, things become significantly less fun. As a global average, the cost of a…

In a traditional business model, core business assets included property, equipment, inventory, and cash. The tangible things we understand as having value. As we transitioned from an industrial revolution to a technological one, however, there was a new asset introduced that has been harder to qualify: data.

According to The Big Data and AI Executive Survey 2020, the percentage of firms investing more than $50M in their data is up to 64.8% in 2020 (compare to just 39.7% in 2018), with a total of 98.8% of firms investing in Big Data and AI initiatives. …

We’ve been talking a lot about our products because there has been some incredible progress on what we’re delivering to the organizations we work with. From tip to tail, we’re changing the way users on the Namara platform access, enrich, manage, and monitor the data flowing through their environment.

But what’s the underlying stuff? At a high level, what is external data and why is it so valuable?

What is external data?

The way we see it, it’s not as easy to pin down as most assume. It seems like anything created outside your organization would count as external data, right? …

Our “INNERJOIN” series features collaborations, integrations, and thought partners. We’re offering perspectives from thought leaders in different industries to show the value, flexibility, and potential in data.

In this blog post, we host a story from the Institute for Design-Driven Analytics by Parmisse Menendez Limo, recent graduate of Humber College’s graduate certificate program in journalism, where she digs into the data that suggest why Peru’s poorest workers are less likely to contract COVID-19.

Since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 has led Peru into a severe economic crisis in which more than 6 million Peruvians have lost their jobs between…

#ActiveTO #CycleTO #CafeTO #PhysicalDistancing. These are all familiar hashtags that we’ve seen over the summer in Toronto. The messaging is clear: “Get outside, but maintain physical distancing.” This is sound advice, indeed. Being outside can help with promoting focus, relieving anxiety, and encouraging active lifestyles.

Given that Canadian summers are short and precious, being outside allows us to soak up the much needed vitamin D! At the same time, in light of the on-going pandemic, we must continue to stay 6 feet apart to help flatten the curve and delay and/or reduce the impact of a second wave.

Ontario has…