ThinkTWENTY20

SP Kothari, Chief Economist and Director, Division of Economic and Risk Analysis at the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently gave a speech on the topic of “Policy Challenges and Research Opportunities in the Era of Big Data. 

He discussed the issues presented by the growing body of big data, pointing out that “the world generates more data every two days than all of humanity generated from the dawn of time to the year 2003.”

He began his analysis by pointing to “security, which is a primary concern of the SEC. The volume, velocity, and variety of big data make security particularly challenging for several reasons. First, big data are harder to store and maintain. For example, it is harder to ensure that only the right people at only the right time have access to only the right data. Second, big data are bigger targets for bad actors. For example, portfolio holdings data for all investment advisors are more valuable than portfolio holdings data for one investment advisor, and weekly portfolio holdings data are more valuable than annual portfolio holdings data. These challenges get harder as certain data sets start to include more personally identifiable information (PII) or identifiers that link investors and institutions within and across data sets.”

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