Our increasing reliance on data is causing it to evolve into a progressively valuable asset that needs effective protection. Unfortunately we are seeing a few stories in the news about data being hacked, or worse, stolen, meaning the need for exceptional protection is on the rise.
To protect data assets you need to provide robust regulation, standards and governance as well as a superior technological infrastructure.
So how are we doing that exactly?
A lot of our work in the Isle of Man is data driven so we’re investing in enhancement of our services and leading the way in data protection.
Though we are not part of the EU, we have adopted legislation that is modelled on the EU Data Protection Directive. This means the EU Commission has deemed that the Island’s law ensures an adequate level of protection for data – the so called “Adequacy Finding”- and this both permits and aids the transfer of data in and out of the island from the EU.
Reforms to the above Directive announced December 2015 (GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulations) will usher in new rules that will make the Isle of Man even more attractive as a place to hold data as the reforms give rights that provide:
- easier access to data
- data portability and transference
- rights to have data deleted (so called “right to be forgotten”)
The single biggest advantage emerging from the reforms mean the Isle of Man may position itself as a unique platform for non EU based companies seeking data access to the EU marketplace (with a population of some 600 million).
In addition the Island offers world class telecoms interconnectivity, masses of bandwidth and six Tier 3 data centres. These communications networks are powered by electricity we generate from supplies of natural gas. Any surplus electricity we sell to the UK national grid. This makes the Isle of Man an excellent place to continuously receive and host commercial volumes of data delivered at high velocity.
Further, the Island is now ideally suited to performing data analytics on an industrial scale. By placing data analyst staff members in the Island to analyse data a multi-national client, for example, may add huge value (booked profit) to the data set.
This development has the potential to usher in a new Isle of Man era of accelerated economic and jobs growth in this lucrative sector of the ICT industry.
Data, like all quality assets will always flow to where it’s best understood, treated and protected and that’s increasingly the Isle of Man.
[su_box title=”About Brian Donegan” style=”noise” box_color=”#336588″]
Brian Donegan is director of foreign direct investment at Isle of Man Finance on creating Bitcoin Island. He has been instrumental in bringing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency businesses to the Isle of Man.[/su_box]
