Carruthers & Jackson News

Happy New Year and welcome to the first Coffee & Cake briefing of 2023! This is the first of four special edition Coffee & Cake sessions focusing on our recently published Data Maturity Index. This month we will cover the Purpose of data in buinsesses.??Please enjoy all the latest data news, trends and insights, in a addition to a few exciting Carruthers and Jackson updates below!

Date Bytes

Find this month’s top data stories that you might have missed below.

Meta sues ‘data scraping for hire’ service that collected info on 600k users?

A lawsuit was filed by Meta against “scraping-for-hire” service, Voyager Labs, for allegedly using fake accounts, proprietary software, and a sprawling network of IP addresses to surreptitiously collect massive amounts of personal data from users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

Most British firms track race, ethnicity data but targets still lacking

A survey found that nearly three-quarters of British firms are tracking race and ethnicity data, yet few have set targets to improve workplace equality or linked efforts to management pay. A survey of 70 firms by consulting firm, Mercer, showed that while 72% were collecting data, just over three-quarters were not publishing it and just one in three had set aspirational goals or targets to improve.

Severe disruption to Royal Mail's overseas deliveries caused by ransomware

A cyber-attack has affected computer systems used by the Royal Mail to dispatch deliveries abroad. Royal Mail asked customers to stop sending letters and parcels overseas after criminals, who were said to be Russian, launched an attack on the company, sending a ransom note which read: "Your data are stolen and encrypted."

Latest NHS data reveals the pressures hospitals are facing

As the NHS grapples with flu, COVID and staff shortages, patient data has been released disclosing bed occupancy, hospital numbers and ambulance handover delays at A&Es to highlight the winter pressure being felt by the NHS.

Find out how different companies and organisations used your data this month.

T-Mobile Says Hacker Got Data From 37 million Customer Accounts

T-Mobile has reported its second major data breach in two years, after the company agreed to pay $350 million to customers in July because of an August 2021 breach where personal data was taken.

In the most recent data breach, hackers accessed the personal data of 37 million customers. The telecom giant said that the “bad actor” has been stealing the data, which includes “name, billing address, email, phone number, date of birth, T-Mobile account number and information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features” since November 25.

T-Mobile said no social security numbers, credit card information, government ID numbers, passwords, PINs or financial information were exposed in the hack.

Nevertheless, that information can be compiled with other stolen or publicly available information and used by scammers to steal people’s identities or money. T-Mobile said it is working with law enforcement and has begun to notify customers whose information may have been breached.

Tesco launches Clubcard data app – and reveals the nation’s favourite meal deal

Retail giant Tesco has revealed the nation’s most popular meal deal as it expands its Clubcard service with its own year-in-review tool. This follows a huge number of retailers and online platforms who have been presenting users with their personal data for viral appeal.

Named Clubcard Unpacked, it will show users a raft of data gathered by the retailer over the course of the last year, including their top three most shopped-for items, favourite aisle and their preferred meal deal combination.

Tesco customers will be able to compare their meal deal choice to the nation’s favourite: the Sausage, Bacon & Egg Triple Sandwich, McCoy’s Flame Grilled Steak Crisps and a 500ml Coca-Cola.

The scheme follows in the footsteps of streaming platform, Spotify and Sainsbury’s in serving users their own data and packaging it for sharing on social media.??

Find out what experts at Carruthers and Jackson think about this month’s news.

To be a successful modern organisation, you need to use your data effectively. Whether this is the NHS gaining a deeper understanding of how and where improvements can be made to data landscapes to provide tangible business value, or organisations like T- Mobile and Royal Mail taking steps to improve data governance processes to protect personal information… this all contributes to an organisations data maturity.

What many businesses fail to grasp, however, is that developing a data strategy isn’t simply a tick-box exercise. You can’t reach an ‘end-point’ when it comes to using data. Understanding the real purpose of data, and how organisations can develop a strategy that enables them to go beyond the ordinary and really harness the potential of data-driven business transformation, is the important part.

Central to this is realising that the proper use of data isn’t about following the same rules as everyone else. Many organisations see data governance as the need for a set of comprehensive rules that keep data within narrow and easily controllable confines. Instead, the proper use of data is about being creative and recognising the greater business purpose of data.

Results from our first Data Maturity Index tell us two things about the overall maturity of Data Purpose. Firstly, many organisations currently don’t understand the strategic importance of data governance beyond regulatory compliance. Secondly, most data leaders are struggling to implement an effective governance framework that would help them derive value from their data. Left unchecked, there is a risk that organisations are leaving data assets unmanaged, opening themselves up to both legal and holistic data risks, and the associated reputational damage that this can do to a brand.

In addition, 44% of data leaders believe their organisations is only considering data risk within the confines of a regulatory framework, with just 27% reporting that their data risk is well managed and incorporated within their Enterprise Risk Management Approach. While its clearly important to adhere to rules and regulation, rigid data governance like this can have the unintended effect of doing more harm than good to data operations, stifling creativity in the name of compliance.

Organisations that do not consider data risk beyond regulatory compliance potentially leaves them open to holistic data risk. This means that while the impacts of poor-quality data, legal misuse of data, and data loss are all risks to an organisation’s ongoing data operations, our data suggests that very few organisations are currently able to monitor for these issues.

DMI Launch- In December, we shared our first DMI Report. Combining the data gathered from hundreds of data leader interviews with expert analysis from some of the most influential Chief Data Officers in the industry, the report sheds light on the true scale of data literacy and governance challenges facing modern businesses. You can download the full report for free here: https://lnkd.in/eia9Nnz4

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C&J In the News- Check out coverage of the Carruthers and Jackson DMI report in Computer Weekly! Please check out the following article which discusses the DMI findings that a significant majority of data function leaders consider their organisations’ employees to lack adequate data literacy. Read the full article here: Data leaders bewail employee data illiteracy

The C&J Team Is Growing - We are so pleased to announce that we have two new members of the team, Fola & Jane, who have both joined Carruthers & Jackson as our newest Senior Data Consultants. We look forward to introducing them to our community in the upcoming months!

Coffee & Cake is back!! – Coffee & Cake is back for 2023! We can’t wait to kick off the series later today with our first session discussing the DMI and the importance of purpose in a data strategy. Sign up to join us at 4pm today here: https://lnkd.in/ehtyDdjd.

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