Tech giant IBM concerned about data security

IBM Chair Ginni Rometty. She has called on companies and individuals to invest in advanced data security. [Courtesy]

IBM is calling on technology companies to act responsibly with users’ data in their custody to restore confidence in the industry.

Speaking in Las Vegas at the inaugural IBM Think 2018 conference, Ginni Rometty noted that data is the greatest opportunity of our time but also underscoring fact that it has the potential to be greatest issue that needed to be handled with utmost sensitivity.

"If you believe data is the basis for competitive advantage which I believe many do, then you have to work with companies, people, partners that you trust," she said.

"Data belongs to the creators and we are going to be judged by how we store it. Not only IBM or any tech companies but all of us must act to help in this," she said.

She called on companies and individuals to invest in advanced data security to deter misuse even as it is emerging that only 4 percent of the world encrypts data.

The call comes at a time when tech giant Facebook and data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica are at the center of a dispute over the harvesting and use of personal data-and whether it was used to influence the outcome of last year’s general elections in Kenya, the US 2016 presidential election or the UK Brexit referendum.

According to a video secretly recorded and broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 News on Monday, Cambridge Analytica (CA), a data analytics firm, deployed psychological manipulation to influence voters in both the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections.

It is alleged that it interviewed 47,000 people to assess Kenyans' fears, then used the information to engineer an online media onslaught against President Uhuru's opponents.

Cambridge Analytica has since denied the claims.

Provoked by such allegations in the tech industry, Ginn Rometty, the IBM Chairman called on the general public and companies to consider advanced data encryption that would block access for non-intended use.

At the three day Think 2018 Conference in Las Vegas, IBM predicted five innovations that will help change peoples lives in the next five years.

The scientists predicted that in the next five years, small, autonomous artificial intelligent (AI) microscopes, networked in the cloud and deployed around the world, will continually monitor in real time the health of one of Earth's most important and threatened resources: water.

IBM scientists are working on an approach that uses plankton, which are natural, biological sensors of aquatic health.

AI microscopes can be placed in bodies of water to track plankton movement in 3D, in their natural environment, and use this information to predict their behavior and health.

This could help in situations like oil spills and runoff from land-based pollution sources, and to predict threats such as red tides.