Data Privacy Laws Could Make Managing Oil, Gas Data Flows Difficult

It’s all a part of the same debate of what rights companies have in protecting data, how laws conflict in different places and what is a company’s duty in making information accessible to third parties.

“All these factors make the decision tree for companies in storing data more difficult,” said McLeod, noting that companies will continue to face challenges, given the continued growth in data volumes, and relatively untested regulations could make being in compliance in different parts of the world difficult.

To address the issue, companies will need to be more rigorous in how the track and categorize data, determining what information is vital to their business, and making informed decisions on where they store data and their encryption practices. Companies also need to ensure that their data storage and sharing practices do not run roughshod over regulations while still protecting important information.

“We are seeing some companies forming internal brain trusts on how to tackle issues,” said McLeod.

The brain trusts formed to develop a data governance policy involve interested third parties and representatives from companies’ IT, legal and risk management departments. In some cases, companies may need outside advance on rolling out a data governance policy.

Oil and gas companies should also implement lean and mean data policies and encourage workers to consider what data is valuable and how it is transmitted, and keeping the amount of data retained to a minimum. Companies should also eliminate data that, while not critical, could pose an issue.