Extract from Jonathan Younie’s article “Data Minimization – Why It Is Essential for Your Organization”
To say that modern business is data-driven is to say that water is wet, the sky is blue, and the sun is hot. It’s obvious. Data is the lifeblood of today’s enterprise. Whether it’s customer data, operational information, competitor insights, or product development, organizations today live and breathe off of the insights provided by their data. The ability to generate content with greater efficiency and complexity is at a level greater than any time in human history and it’s only going to grow.
While the power to generate and accumulate data is at an all-time high, the need to store, manage, and refine data is also at its historical peak. Storing and using data costs money in tangible and intangible ways. The legality of what data can be stored and for how long is an ever-growing and complicated business consideration. So, while the ability to generate data is of great concern to most organizations, of similar concern needs to be how that data is managed and disposed of properly. This is the world of data minimization.
Straightforwardly, Data minimization is the practice of collecting, processing and storing only the data that is strictly necessary for the intended purpose.
