Mastercard and IBM join forces for new “data trust”, Truata
Mastercard and IBM team for new “data trust”
Mastercard and IBM have founded Truata, an independent trust to allow companies to conduct analytics while complying with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Conceived by Mastercard, Truata will provide a new standard in data hosting and anonymisation,” the two companies state.
It will offer a service to fully anonymise data and provides analytic services to assist customers with tools, data insights, algorithms and reports that customers can use in their own products and solutions.
IBM will provide technology solutions, including cloud, analytics and cognitive computing. “A cornerstone of the collaboration will be to apply anonymisation technologies from IBM’s global research teams,” Truata’s founders add.
The new company is based in Ireland. Its CEO is Felix Marx, who moves from his role of EVP of services in Asia Pacific at Mastercard. The company’s board includes prominent technologists and data protection experts such as Professor Barry Smyth, digital chair of computer science at University College Dublin; Aoife Sexton, principal at Tech Law Services and co-founder and director at Frontier Privacy, a data protection services consultancy firm; and Kevin Butler, managing director of TMF Group Ireland.
Truata’s governance structure enables the company to operate independently of its beneficiaries and customers, “thereby allowing it to maintain direct control over data hosting and analytics on behalf of its client companies”.
Mastercard has signed as one of the first customers.
“Truata is built on the long-standing demand for data, security and privacy. This demand will be catalysed by the arrival of the GDPR and other developments like 5G and the internet of things (IoT),” Marx says. “The Truata data trust, paired with data anonymisation and analytics, is a natural next step in the evolution of the data economy.”
