Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, Acxiom, at MIT CDOIQ 2014 with Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly 8th Annual MIT Chief Data Officer & Information Quality Symposium @theCUBE #MITIQ The growing importance of information in decision-making is pushing priorities such as accuracy and compliance higher up the corporate agenda, to the point that a growing number of organizations are now are appointing dedicated leaders charged with shouldering those new responsibilities. And as it turns out, that role doesn’t necessarily correspond to the chief data officer, or CDO for short, the emerging position that dominates the governance discussion today. At Acxiom Corp., the task of regulating how information is accessed and used within the company falls under the domain of the chief privacy officer, a title currently held by Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, who appeared on theCUBE at the recently concluded MIT CDOIQ Symposium to provide a rare glimpse into her world. The Arizona-based Acxiom helps organizations across different industries harness data to target and interact with their audiences more effectively, primarily in an advertising context but not exclusively. The company boasts a much longer history than most of the competition, having been around since the late 1960s, and operates two primary businesses: a set of hosting services aimed at elevating the growing information management burden for clients, and a set complementary of cloud solutions that offer insight into customer behavior. Knowledge is power At the heart of the portfolio is a massive repository that stores trillions of data points about hundreds of millions of consumers around the world. The thought of a single company knowing that much about so many people has raised concerns among some advocacy groups and lawmakers, but Barrett Glasgow told hosts Jeff Kelly and Paul Gillin that the information contained in the database is not the kind snooping scandals are made of. Instead, it contains details about demographics and interests that marketers can use to serve up more personalized content for consumers. Yet despite the seemingly harmless nature of the information it collects, Barrett Glasgow said that Acxiom takes active measure to protect against misuse. That kind of self-regulation has become a necessity in the era of unstructured data. “The gap between what we can technically to and what customers feel is appropriate or not is growing,” she explained. “Technology is fast outpacing law and even industry best practices, so companies have to ask themselves what would the consumer think about, how would they react to the risks created by certain use of data.”