Tag Archives: privacy

Strategic Approaches, Strategic Report

Blockchain Regulatory Framework, Legal Challenges and the Financial Industry

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Blockchain Regulatory Framework, Legal Challenges and the Financial Industry

Camille Madec

Introduction

In order to stay competitive, financial industry must seize the opportunities of the on-going technological disruption, and particularly with the recent so-called blockchain innovation when some argue that this new technology has the potential to replace banks as financial intermediaries for transfer and exchanges of money. In this transitional context, financial sector could face new cybersecurity risks, with sophisticated attacks, which eventually call for a renewed regulation framework. Here the financial sector means banks, insurers, asset managers, and advisory firms.

Blockchain can be defined as “a peer-to-peer operated public digital ledger that records all transactions executed for a particular asset (…) The Blockchain maintains this record across a network of computers, and anyone on the network can access the ledger. Blockchain is ‘decentralised’ meaning people on the network maintain the ledger, requiring no central or third party intermediary involvement. […] Users known as ‘miners’ use specialized software to look for these time stamped ‘blocks’, verify their accuracy using a special algorithm, and add the block to the chain. The chain maintains chronological order for all blocks added because of these time-stamps.” (Alderman, 2015)

Hence, Blockchain, well known through the so-called bit coin, could open much more perspective and should guaranty security and the validation of all the exchange of data. In addition to open room for new business opportunities, this new technology could disrupt the legal conception of privacy, intellectual property right, and presents some issues regarding financial institution accountability given the new associated risks. As a consequence while financial institutions have been under strengths by the new regulatory requirements in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, they might see their accountability rises again to address cybersecurity risks and associated prejudices related to blockchain innovation.

This paper explains how business compliance to new cyber regulatory framework is a strategic issue for financial institutions. It presents the financial institutions specific data profile and linked eventual collateral damages. It highlights blockchain innovation opportunities and associated new cybercrime challenges. It describes the current European regulatory framework and legal accountability scenarios. It then finally supports the hypothesis of cyber compliance as a corporate competitive advantage and maps out some elements
of potential recommendations to strengthen cybersecurity resilience.

Read the full strategic report here: regulatory compliance and cybersecurity

References

Alderman, P. (2015). Blockchain –emerging legal issues. Lexology, Global.

Ethical and Societal Challenges, Strategic Report

Privacy on the Internet: a sweet dream?

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 Privacy on the Internet: a sweet dream?

Quentin Jaubert, Adrien Zamora

Introduction

“Big Brother is watching you” wrote Georges Orwell. In this groundbreaking book, Orwell describes a society in which the officials know everything that would happen inside the country by performing an omnipresent surveillance over the inhabitants. Today’s police forces and secret services own a numerous number of surveillance tools such as biometry, chips, facial recognition, localization that allow them to become very intrusive security forces. But the “policing” has now also become the property of major private companies (social media platforms, search engines, telecommunication carriers etc). A funny way of rethinking Orwell’s quote in our modern world would be: “Big Browser is watching you”.

There was a time where people had their privacy. One could go shopping when exiting the office, buy several stuffs in cash, go back home, close the doors and curtains, and run their private life. That was it. But privacy has evolved over time. If “privacy” can be defined as a “right to be let alone” (Warren and Brandeis, 1890), or even “the right to prevent the disclosure of personal information to others” (Westin, 1968), the concept has recently taken a multidimensional nature regarding “information, accessibility and expression” (Decew, 1997), and with the rise of the Internet, technology has created new privacy issues (Austin, 2003) which lead us to wonder: is online privacy a sweet dream?

In order to understand the issues linked to our online privacy and generate insights from it, we adopted the following method:

How has the privacy concept evolved with the appearance of the Internet?

In such a connected world, should we/can we protect our privacy? If yes, how?

Where will we be standing in the next 5, 10, 20 years? Will “online privacy” ever mean anything in the next decades?

Read the full strategic report here: privacy on the internet: a sweet dream?

References

Austin, L. (2003). Privacy and the Question of Technology. Law and Philosophy, 22(2), 119-166.

DeCew, J. W. (1997). In pursuit of privacy: Law, ethics, and the rise of technology. Cornell University Press.
Orwell, G. (2009). Nineteen eighty-four. Everyman’s Library.
Warren, S. D., & Brandeis, L. D. (1890). The right to privacy. Harvard law review, 193-220.
Westin, A. F. (1968). Privacy and freedom. Washington and Lee Law Review, 25(1), 166.