Evaluation on the Use of Metadata in the Retail Industry Research Paper

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Cyber Security Relating to the Use of Metadata in the Retail Industry

The Goal of Businesses

Importance of Consumer Meta-data to businesses within the Retail Industry

Instances where the use of Meta Data may be harmful to Consumer

Possible Method those lawmakers should consider regulating to control the use of Meta-data

Goals of lawmakers within the Public Sector

Goals of this industry, and Public Sector goals, as more new cybersecurity Laws are Promulgated

In the present digital environment, both the government and private companies have goals to pursue. While the goal of the retail companies is to increase their revenue and protect their critical assets, the goal of the public sector is to protect both consumers and private companies. However, the public sector may face challenging to balance these goals because increasing number of retail companies are using the big data to collect private data on their customers that may lead to the intrusion of consumer's privacy. Using Wal-Mart and Target as the examples, this paper evaluates the use of the big data in the retail businesses environment, its effect on the privacy of customer, and a recommendation to protect consumers from unnecessary privacy intrusion.

The Goal of Businesses

In the contemporary global digital environment, the goal of businesses is to make profits, create employment for people, safeguarding their financial information, protecting their intellectual property and business reputations. With an increasing number of threats and nature of the sophistication of cyber-attacks, businesses do not have an option but to protect the customers' sensitive data to assist them enjoying competitive market advantages. Typically, international business environments have experienced series of cyber events that have caused the intellectual property theft, financial loss, reputation damage, and legal exposure to businesses. With such events at stake, data security deserves a high level of attention to preserving the integrity of business organizations. For example, Target operates a chain of retail store in the United States and outside the United States; the business goal of the company is to enhance asset protection and loss prevention. The company also believes in creating leading measures to develop a comfortable workplace for employee and provides a comfortable retail experience for their customers. The Target Corporation also believes in protecting the company physical asset and big data that compose of the customer data.

Wal-Mart is the largest retail store in the United States. The goal of the Wal-Mart is to cut costs and make people live a better life. The company is also committed to offering best service to people, and save people money by offering low price for their customer. Wal-Mart also offers an ambitious goal by becoming number one healthcare provider. The company has teamed up with DirectHealth.com to sell health insurance to its customers across its 4,300 chain stores. (Diamond, 2014).

Importance of Consumer Meta-data to businesses within the Retail Industry

In the contemporary business environment, increasing number of organizations are relying on meta-data to collect information about their customer to make effective decisions concerning their businesses. Metadata is a gigantic information of all the data stored in the information systems. For example, the consumer metadata consists of information about consumers that include their buying pattern, preferences, taste, and other information that can make an organization to develop effective decision. Moreover, the metadata assists organizations to develop data analytics help in collecting information about the customer and understand their demographic pattern, which assists in developing an effective marketing plan. For example, Wal-Mart is the biggest retail company in the United States, and the company has developed a Big Data that consists a massive amount of information about their consumer and analyzing the information to track the consumers both at offline and online. Moreover, Wal-Mart uses the big data to understand the consumer behaviors when making a purchase. The big data also provide information on the web pages that consumer constant visit. The data analytic also reveals the demographic patterns of people in a specific geographical location that purchase the highest number of product from Wal-Mart. By collecting these data, and analyze them, Wal-Mart is able to develop an effective marketing program that will assist the company to command competitive market advantages. Raman, Beets, and Kabay, (2014) argues that big data assist the organization to enjoy cost saving and increase productivity. Moreover, "Big data processes can generate a model of what has a high probability of being PII [personally identifiable information], essentially imagining your data for you." (Davey, 2013 11), which can be used to target customer.

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2. Instances where the use of Meta Data may be harmful to Consumer

Despite the importance of metadata for organizational competitive market advantage, many companies are increasingly using the metadata to collect private information of the customer. For example, big retail stores such as Target Company and Wal-Mart are using the predictive data to predict purchasing pattern of the consumer. While this strategy might be beneficial to the organizations, nevertheless, the companies often collect unnecessary private information of consumer that may be harmful to customers. In 2010, the Target search engine predicted that a high school girl was pregnant, and the company sent promotional mailings to her father. It was after the father received the promotional letter that he realized that he was going to be a grandfather. The most disturbing aspect of this event was that the woman did not disclose to the Target that she was pregnant. The issue was that Target predictive analytics predicted that the woman was pregnant, and submitted her name to their marketing department. This type of predictive marketing technique is referred as "predictive privacy harm" (Crawford, & Schultz, 2014 p 1).

In the United States, the use of predictive data is highly unregulated in the e-commerce sector. Crawford, & Schultz, (2014) point out that predictive analytical data is posing a problem to the consumer because some retail companies are using the predictive analytics to intrude into the privacy of consumers. For example, personal harm can emerge if the company accesses the customers' personal data without their knowledge. Some predictive analytics can predict that some of their customers are undergoing a health problem, and they may use this information to send unnecessary insurance policies to these customers. While big data can provide a big benefit to businesses, however, big data can generate a privacy problem to the consumer. For example, the big data can expose sensitive health problem of the consumer, deliver a discriminatory housing practice, and facilitate predictive policing. The health data are particularly vulnerable because it can expose a multitude information of patient's records. Moreover, the big data allows some companies to practice discriminatory practice. Some companies use the big data to compare the income of consumers based on their geographical location and use the data to design the pricing discrimination. Some law enforcement agents are also using the big data to practice predictive policing with the goal of investigating unresolved cases and prevent future crimes. For example, New York police force are using the GIS (Geographical Information System) to collect historical data on the areas that are likely to be prone to crimes. However, the predictive policing is generating the ethical question because it is increasing being subject to abuse. Despite the effort of the government to regulate the use of the big data for predictive business, a reliance on big data for an effective business promotion makes the current regulation to be infective. Wal-Mart is particularly committed to preventing the Big Data to be regulated by spending over $30 million to lobby the lawmakers to make the areas remaining unregulated. While some members of House of Representatives and House of Senate have proposed legislations to regulate the use of big data to track consumer, however, these legislations have not become a law because of the extensive lobbying from Wal-Mart and other online retail giants in the United States.

3. Possible Method those lawmakers should consider regulating to control the use of Meta-data

In the light of the way the retail companies and other organizations intrude into the privacy of consumer, it is worth considering noting that the appropriate private protection is essential to protect the private information of the consumer. It is essential for the lawmakers to make a new law that will curtail the use of big data in intruding into the privacy of individual consumers. At present, the federal legislation that regulates the use of big data in a business environment is non-existence; however, some states such as Colorado, Connecticut, California, and Delaware have promulgated laws to protect consumer privacy. For example, California signed three different bills related to online privacy into law.

Moreover, "Delaware Code § 1204C prohibits operators of websites, online or cloud computing services, online applications, or mobile applications directed at children directed to children from marketing or advertising on its Internet service specified products or services deemed harmful to children." (NCSL 2013 p 1).

The law also prohibits online operators to disclose the PII (personally identifiable information) of.....

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