Nearly every organization carries customer data in one or another form. Customers and consumers share their data with an expectation that the receiving organization would protect their data and treat it with the same respect as organisations treat their customers. There is an unexpressed yet powerful concept of data trusteeship that underlies every act of data sharing between customers and businesses. What does it mean to be a data trustee? How can organisations assess their data trusteeship maturity, and take actions to continuously improve that?

This white paper explores the concept of data trusteeship in greater detail. It breaks down data trusteeship as a function of data privacy and data security readiness. It then proceeds to let organisations self-assess their data trusteeship maturity, and have them figure out their data trustee index (DTI) on a scale of 0 to 100. The author’s objective is to highlight the various facets of trusteeship often going beyond the regulatory requirements, which are deemed necessary and important, but not sufficient. A world where sensitive data is secure and protected, and still retains its utility is a world where decisions can be made with data without trampling on consumers’ data privacy and security rights.

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Data Trustee Index (DTI) = Data Security Readiness x (1 + Data Privacy Readiness); normalised on a scale of 0 to 100.