So JPMorgan took a bit of a reputation hit when hackers compromised the data of 83m of the company's clients. [1] The financial repercussions were minimal, if there even were any to begin with. You can bet they still collect and store all the data they can. They don't really care, and customers don't really care all that much either.
On the other hand, we have medical data, which is essential for pharmaceutical and academic research but would be very, very harmful in the wrong hands. A non-compliant company will get smacked with heavy fines under HIPAA for not safeguarding data in a strict, standardized manner.
Until government regulation makes data breaches substantially costly for Company X (Target, Adobe, LastPass, Department of Personnel Management, etc.), Company X will continue to gather as much data as possible.
It's an asset with unbounded upside (who knows what great economic engine data might fuel in 5-10 years) and no financial downside because it carries no legal risk, and very minimal storage costs.
So JPMorgan took a bit of a reputation hit when hackers compromised the data of 83m of the company's clients. [1] The financial repercussions were minimal, if there even were any to begin with. You can bet they still collect and store all the data they can. They don't really care, and customers don't really care all that much either.
On the other hand, we have medical data, which is essential for pharmaceutical and academic research but would be very, very harmful in the wrong hands. A non-compliant company will get smacked with heavy fines under HIPAA for not safeguarding data in a strict, standardized manner.
Until government regulation makes data breaches substantially costly for Company X (Target, Adobe, LastPass, Department of Personnel Management, etc.), Company X will continue to gather as much data as possible.
It's an asset with unbounded upside (who knows what great economic engine data might fuel in 5-10 years) and no financial downside because it carries no legal risk, and very minimal storage costs.
[1] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/entry-point-of-jpmorg...