VIDEO | TD Bank Head of Enterprise Data Management: We Try to Protect Customer Data at Any Cost

(US and Canada) Wes Anderson, Vice President and Head of Enterprise Data Management at TD Bank, speaks with Jeffrey Dobin, Head of Sales at Duality Technologies, in a video interview about the data privacy versus utility trade-off, fraud analysis, and data protection.

Beginning the conversation, Anderson sheds light on managing data privacy versus the utility tradeoff by stating that the bank is in the trust business. He adds that the way customers are treated reflects their trust in the bank’s system and the organization considers that when using customer data.

Anderson mentions using data in a way that customers are comfortable with. Next, he states that leaving out any data that links to other data impacts the utility of that data. Explaining further, he recalls a past situation where the account information was linked to an email address. He considers the email address a connector to other valuable information about a customer.

Additionally, Anderson notes that masking or anonymizing the email address would impact the utility of that particular data. He states that organizations must consider this when identifying customers using personally identifiable information.

On the issue of data classification, Anderson believes there are many use cases for segmenting customers and targeting specific segments of customers. However, fraud analytics is one area to consider while data sharing. He asserts that it is critical to connect the dots between different data sets without exposing sensitive information to the person analyzing to determine fraud.

Further, Anderson mentions vendors in the marketplace who are looking to tackle this challenge. However, it is hard to do it consistently behind the scenes while masking it from the analyst building the models.

Emphasizing data protection, Anderston opines that the organization tries to protect its customer data at any cost. He urges organizations to focus on particular aspects of data protection, whether sharing it internally or externally. When dealing with sensitive information, it is crucial to evaluate if it is necessary to share it with a third party. This includes checking whether the individual needs the information.

According to Anderson, while a third party may need certain information to support an organizational contract, it is critical to understand what not to share. Furthermore, he highlights using encryption techniques to protect sensitive data before sending it to another system. He also considers the possibility of creating synthetic data to identify sensitive information and change it for a particular analytics model.

In conclusion, Anderson recommends using various techniques to protect sensitive data, but it is imperative to assess them for internal cases and any third-party relationships.

CDO Magazine appreciates Wes Anderson for sharing insights and data success stories with our global community.

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