Data for the common good and ethical issues

This week, we will hear from two guest speakers Hetan Shah and Chris Johnson. Hetan Shah is executive director of the Royal Statistical Society and Chris Johnson is Professor and Head of Computing at the University of Glasgow

Hetan Shah (executive director of the Royal Statistical Society)

VideoHetan Shah introductionDuration3:34

Hetan Shah is executive director of the Royal Statistical Society, a body with over 9,000 members, with a vision of data at the heart of understanding and decision-making. He is Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, Kings College London, and chair of the Friends Provident Foundation, a grant making trust. Hetan is on the advisory board of the Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus, the Science Media Centre and the Big Lottery Fund's Data and Evidence advisory group. He is a member of the Digital Catapult’s data ethics group providing advice to artificial intelligence start up businesses.

VideoEthical issues when using dataDuration6:19

With the increasing ubiquity of data, especially due to digital data, there is increasing interest in the ethics relating to data usage. Hetan will consider some of the key issues relating to data ethics including governance, accountability, privacy, risk, and the ethical implications of not using the data. He will consider recent debates including on making machine learning algorithms more accountable, and the question of whether ‘data ownership’ might be a useful way forward to give people more protection.

VideoProposed solutions to data ethics challengesDuration8:05

Supplementary Reading

Chris Johnson (Professor and head of computing at the University of Glasgow)

Chris Johnson is Professor and Head of Computing at the University of Glasgow. His work focuses on the cyber security of safety-critical systems. This is an important topic, for instance, when you cannot simply shut down a pacemaker if you suspect it might have been compromised by malware if the patient’s welfare depends on the continued operation of that device. Johnson helps lead work to protect the UK civil nuclear industry and is a member of the GCHQ/NCSC steering committee on industrial control systems. He has held fellowships from NASA and the US Air Force. He advises the UK Department for Transport on securing data exchanges across airports, airlines and air traffic companies. He has more than 300 peer-reviewed publications.

VideoUse of Statistics in cyber-security 1Duration8:37

Chris introduces some of the key concerns in the cyber security of safety-critical systems; in particular considering the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) also known as Industry 4.0. More and more application processes that were traditionally isolated by a physical “air gap” from other networks are now accessible over the Internet. This expands the range of attack vectors that might compromise these systems. These new connections expose legacy components that were designed in an age before cyber security was a concern. At the same time, there is a growing reliance on mass-market “Commercial Off The Shelf” (COTS) components that make industrial control systems vulnerable to a number of well-publicised threats. A key concern is that these applications provide specific examples from a broader class of cyber-physical systems where there can be kinetic consequences from any compromise. Finally, there are supply chain concerns where cyber vulnerabilities stem not from weaknesses in the operator’s own systems but in those who supply them. Supply chain vulnerabilities are particular problematic, but not limited to, situations where there are no domestic companies with a production capability in hardware components.

VideoUse of Statistics in cyber-security 2Duration13:28

Supplementary materials