Big Data in Finance: Ethical Challenges

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Along with the advent of the In-ternet, the volume of generated and stored data began to grow at an un-precedented rate. Until now, tech-nological limitations have prevented any efficient analysis of this data over any given time. It is only during the past few years that we have seen the emergence of tools that can harness Big Data to produce accurate results in just a few seconds. Today, the sub-ject of data exploitation has come to the fore. This phenomenon has been referred to as Big Data. It affords tre-mendous growth opportunities but also raises controversial questions about privacy. The current situation favours the business community, which may lead to data misuse and unethical conduct in the financial sector. This industry is grounded on trust and ethical concerns are inva-riably given precedence. Bearing that in mind, special attention should be paid to the most sensitive social is-sues, in particular data protection.

The phenomenon of Big Data

Every day people generate an abundance of information about themselves, their behaviour and their interests. On an average mor-ning you fire up your Internet brow-ser and open a website. During the milliseconds that pass between clic-king on a link and the desired con-tent being displayed on the website, amazing things take place, leaving a lasting footprint in the virtual space.

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