We have all seen the option on many popular web sites to sign in with a Facebook, Twitter or Google ID. Why is that?
This is a facility that is supposed to ease a user’s interaction with a web site that requires some level of personal detail before one can interact with it. Rather than having to re-type all personal details every time, the site can rely on a Facebook/Twitter/Google ID and the processing they have done to authenticate user validity.
“Consumer Data Protection is an identity broker that offers a free service to consumers to hold their personal data and facilitate their interaction with commercial organisations”
This is identity broking. But why isn’t it everywhere? Well, that is a good question. All of the named companies, and more, from Sony and Microsoft to your utility companies, Amazon and PayPal, all want to be the ubiquitous identity broker, but none are. Some have made valiant efforts in the space, but none have clinched it, for various reasons, but the principle one is trust.
Irish innovator
Into this space comes an Irish company that has experience in the area, and though working on a solution for several years, has now arrived with a something that is also General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant.
Consumer Data Protection is an identity broker that offers a free service to consumers to hold their personal data and facilitate their interaction with commercial organisations. The commercial organisations pay for the access, for the benefit of not having to maintain the overhead of data governance and management that would otherwise be the case.
Founded by Brendan Dowling, of Imagine Broadband and other entrepreneurial successes, he is adamant the service will remain free to the consumer.
“We developed the first Consumer Data Protection (CDP) solution in the world, to give consumers total control over the personal data that they share with enterprises, which they choose to engage with, as an employee or customer,” said Dowling. “The CDP solution also gives enterprise users the tools to freely engage with connected consumers across various communications channels, such as SMS, email, letters, voice, CRM, etc.”
“We act as intermediaries that facilitate trusted relationships between consumers and cnterprise at the consumers request, where we store the personal data of the consumer and then share it with the enterprise that consumers choose to connect with (“express permission”). We never share the personal contact details of the consumer with a connected enterprise and only share other personal data as instructed by the consumer through shared forms online (“visibility of data being stored”).”
This is a key point, Dowling points out.
Explicit permission
The consumer’s data is never used in manner that has not been explicitly permitted, which includes anonymised, mass usage data. By ensuring that complete control remains with the consumer, Dowling is certain that trust will be established, and critically, maintained.
This will reassure consumers about the platform and the service, while giving enterprises peace of mind to know that data governance will also protect and support them in compliance with the likes of GDPR, or whatever regulation they may be required to observe.
Dowling said that he has already had significant interest from the retail industry, automotive sector and others. He said that some companies even see it as a boon for managing staff information before extending the service to customers.
Platform
The platform has been in development for around seven years and has evolved from experience across the telecommunications, media, payments, and customer relationship management (CRM) industries.
Dowling said the CDP platform is built on a .NET base and uses SQL database technology, resulting in a “scalable, secure and reliable infrastructure that has been extensively tested across many different industries and applications”.
The platform is hosted in a state of the art data centre in Ireland, using a secure, dedicated, cloud environment, that conforms to ISO 27001 standards.
In terms of how the service works, an enterprise can sign up online, and a CDP member of staff will return contact for account activation. Once activated consumers (employees, customers, suppliers etc.) are invited to register on CDP.ie (if not already registered) and to connect.
Registration
From the consumer perspective, they can register online using CDP.ie. Once registered they search for the enterprise with which they want to interact, and click on the “Connect” button. New connection requests will appear in the Contacts page when logged in. They can then click the ‘Accept’ button and the organisation will appear in the list of contacts.
Enterprises can start to communicate with the consumers in their contacts list using the green buttons under the different types of communications that the consumer has switched on. They can also create forms to collect additional data from connected consumers.
Each consumer can determine which bits of information an organisation can access, depending on the type of interaction they require. For example, a utility will require different details to classified ad site, or a fan forum for football.
“Data that is input by consumers,” said Dowling, “is only visible to an enterprise if the consumer connects and authorises this access, the enterprise can create a data gathering form and ask the consumer to add more data, this data is visible to both the consumer and the enterprise but can be withdrawn at the push of a button by the consumer.”
Enterprise access
“The enterprise will never get access to a consumer’s personal contact details and only get to see the general data such as name, general area where the consumer lives, their gender, general age bracket and other data as provided by consumers through the online form on an enterprise by enterprise basis.”
Dowling is certain that these combined assurances of strict data control by the consumer, limited but appropriate access by the engaging enterprises, deep sectoral knowledge and security implementations will build a level of trust to attract mass usage. By offering a secure, trusted service to all sides, taking on all aspects of privacy and security, Dowling foresees advantages for all users of the service.
Look out for the silver CDP oval on web sites that will allow sign-up or sign-in. It will likely be appearing on a wide variety of sites in the near future.
www.consumerdataprotection.org
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