DataVirus threat: targets are now your brain and decision-making

Do you know what it is about behind the data you trust and use?

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Recently I had the opportunity to contribute to a LinkedIn post on what new can be said about data that wouldn’t have already been said. A rather difficult but very good question.

Most approaches to data usually relate to the importance of its quality, its management, and it is a valuable asset. We could add recurrent questions like whether there is a difference between data and information – and what the definition of data is -, that all businesses would have to be ‘data-driven’, or all the AI/ML buzz wording recycling most of the time existing for decades mathematical/statistical models or coding algorithms circulating between market research and retail, financial/insurance or video games industries.

Forrester published recently this interesting note about “The Emergence of Offensive AI”, and we agree with it. But it is nothing really new yet.

Reason’s Praxis position is that in addition to external attacks or insiders’ actions far too often underestimated (whether it is by incompetence or other), what is key with data nowadays is that a new type of ‘viruses’ – DataVirus as Reason coins it – can sit in unchecked or blindly taken for granted datasets, especially those coming from 3rd parties.

This is an information war on a new level, in a few words.

Targets are decision-makers brains and reasoning capabilities because a logical decision taken upon ‘false data looking right’ remains a decision taken, and that is what matters.

Reason’s contribution to the LinkedIn post was that 1) Organisations should implement at the Governance level a Single Version of the Truth principle (SVoT) and a corresponding strategy, and 2) the major threats to organisations are not so much hacking as polished, neat in appearance, (third party) DataViruses.

This blog presents further Reason’s definition of the DataVirus threat (or Virus-Datasets threat).

I/ Implementing a Single Version of the Truth

This section will be short, as we invite you to read our blog Reason’s SVoT principle here. 

In summary, we recommend every organisation has its own unique reporting language and business definitions at the Board/C-Suite Governance level. The SVoT should also be compliant, at least easily bridge-able, with national and international best practices, and regulatory norms and standards. It is not an easy task, but its benefits are substantial.

II/ Unchecked and blindly taken for granted datasets: the new normal seeked by DataVirus threats

If data is just erroneous, it is still a massive problem that lasts across industries for too long.

But recent observations tend to highlight that your brain and the ways you make decisions are now the targets, the new normal. 

Biased datasets looking good will lead to data analysis in the direction of the bias-design-intended dataset, hence producing information telling decision-makers something that is, which is wrong, as this is only what the virus-dataset wanted you to buy in.

Data has certainly a gold mine potential. But also it is the most dangerous virus any organisation can be exposed to if it is of bad or only poor quality, or even worse, sourced from unknown origins and biased.

Probably the reader will recall the flawed (now retracted) scientific publication and the LancetGate in association with Surgisphere, which, among others, France, Italy and the WHO trusted and immediately decided to stop any research on the (already known) benefits of Hydroxychloroquine against the COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

Another example is the measurement of deaths due to the COVID-19 disease, used by Public Health England, a methodology discovered only recently to be doubtful (here or here), and has led England to over-count by 5377 the number of deaths – while a different death definition was used across the remaining UK countries. How such a difference in methods could have come to happen is not clear but it led to generating wrong data and resulting information, upon which the Government took important decisions, and these could have been different had this data been right, at least consistent in methodology across the UK. 

Any third-party data your organisation acquires without assessing the protocol that led to its generation is like buying a pig in a poke, actually letting in a potential DataVirus threat.

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You will get that this is especially a concern about data originating from 3rd parties upon which we often have even less control than over our own internal data.

We do trust those who sell us data, don’t we? Do we know or even challenge methodologies standing behind the data we use? Well, we shall think twice from now on.

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This is not longer about some businesses’ internal lack of competence or proper processes; it is neither about data management nor data cleansing complex approaches: You can nowadays get perfectly clean datasets that are nevertheless wrong, and the origin of this can spread from human error, not robust research and data generation/collection methodologies down to incompetence or even markets’ fierce strategic competition about dominant paradigms or conflicting strategies, but also fraud or worse.

We need to be aware of the major risks related to such an environment and possible influence on decision-making, resulting in manipulation of C-Suite perceptions about What Is, hence leading very strategic decisions to follow a direction designed by the injected virus datasets, rather than upon what really is.

Virus datasets, as the new perfect weapon to make top Executives act against their own interests, therefore for the benefit of competition or any other unidentified interests?

What really is is possible to identify and measure, although not easily, of course. This requires a proper approach, methodology and discipline, and the willingness to try, though.

A good starting tactic Reason recommends is to put in place processes and scientific methods that will allow businesses to uncover and then drive away biased and false data: eliminating what is false helps us get closer to what is true, like cleaning a garden from the weed helps ornamental plants to grow and blow. There are other quick-win options.

Remember: a business is driven by decision-makers using their brains and reasoning based on the information they gathered. Intellectual and reasoning faculties will now be more and more targeted because of the growing production and consumption of data. and soon automated systems and algorithms pompously named AI.

Being aware of this fact is not the solution to the problem of DataVirus yet, but it certainly is a good start.

Thank you for your time and interest.

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Thank you for your time and interest.

Please join us by subscribing to our Blog. Posts are occasional and written as thoughts come.

Please leave your comment at the bottom of this page to continue the reflection on this post.

If you are looking for a reliable, independent professional consultancy to assist you in getting through the mist and the storm and cutting through an often artificial complexity, please do get in touch with us for an informal discussion, or write to contact @ reasonmakesense .com (please remove spaces)

Get in touch to discuss freely; reason will Make Sense, with you and for you.

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