Fake Data: A never ending nightmare of data research and market analysis
By: Mark Christoph Schütte
Tags: Strategic Frameworks, Data Analysis, Research, Cyber Security, Fake News

Fake Data: A never ending nightmare of data research and market analysis

More companies than ever rely on business and market predictions made by researchers and consultants. Although much data is received and shared through personal connections and business partnerships, especially digital domains increase in relevance and attractiveness for analysts. Within the hype revolving around digital databases and automated market research, we must stay aware of fake data and bad actors attempting to manipulate your decisions and business actions. Specialists might even start to wonder about the need for a new role, solely dedicated at verifying available data.

To provide more details on malicious actors and sources, Schema 1 indicates a strategic model to categorize data threats and actors into one of 4 groups. The available differentiation is dedicated to speed up first response actions and to help researcher with methodological verification of data sources. The order of the schema provides a suggestion of expected costs for verification or clearance, where layer 1 is easier and cheaper to rule out, than layer 4 with no attempt of cost or effort relativity. Although criticists might highlight the apparent lack of self or damage reports by industry, a targeted attack against your business will ruin your forecast.

Following list contains past breaches, where names of organizations are purposefully removed to avoid support of bad actors in marketing activities. According to BBC many fortune 500 companies were hit by a breach of Solarwind, which is currently sourced back to a militant group (Tidy, 2020). Furthermore a lone hacker in the UK is charged with £1.1m for breaching hospital and medical care data, which includes ransomware and modifications. (BBC, 2020) Another example is the hack of Marriott and Starwood, which is currently being traced back to an industrial dedicated team in China (Fruhlinger, 2020). Finally autonomous organizations have made an impact by hacking companies like Sony (BBC, 2014).

To conclude, data researchers and market analysts must be more careful than ever before trusting and working with new data sources. Especially first suspicious evidence should lead analysts to look for applicable verification measures built on top of schema 1. You might even go as far as to suggest new roles or processes solely dedicated to ensuring a root of trust for your data!

Struggling with deployment or operationalization of verification processes in your business? Reach out to me through mail or my booking site at https://cobblevision.company.site. I’ll help you to embed necessary operative activities in your organization based on a methodological strategic framework sourced from scientific research and case studies.

References:

Joe Tidy., (2020). SolarWinds: Why the Sunburst hack is so serious [online]. BBC. [Last Accessed on 16.12.2020] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55321643

BBC.com., (2020).

Dark Overlord hacker pleads guilty [online]. BBC. [Last accessed on 16.12.20] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54247527

Josh Fruhlinger., (2020). Marriott Data Breach FAQ: How did it happen and what was the impact? [online]. CSO Online. [Last accessed on 16.12.2020] Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3441220/marriott-data-breach-faq-how-did-it-happen-and-what-was-the-impact.amp.html

BBC. (2020). Sony’s PlayStation hit by hack attack [online]. BBC. [Last accessed on 16.12.2020] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30373686