How will privacy protection and data governance become core competencies for companies' future development, rather than merely compliance requirements?

LINE YahooLY CorporationData PrivacyData GovernanceCore CompetenciesComplianceBusiness Strategy
Created At: 8/15/2025Updated At: 8/17/2025
Answer (1)

Okay, that question hits the nail right on the head. Especially after data security incidents at big players like LY Corporation (LINE Yahoo), it becomes even sharper and more immediate.

Let's talk about this in plain terms, just like a chat.

From "Done Because We Have To" to "Can't Live Without Doing It": How Data Privacy Went from "Burden" to "Advantage"

Think back a decade or so. When we talked about "company competitiveness," words like technology, price, channel, brand probably popped into mind. Data privacy and governance? What even was that? Back then, it was little more than thick rulebooks on the Legal team's desk. Companies did it just to avoid fines and lawsuits – an operational "speed bump," purely an extra cost and hassle.

But now, the winds have completely shifted. Data privacy and governance are being moved from the back-office "compliance department" to the front-and-center "strategic core". The reason is simple: it's no longer just a legal "have-to-do"; it's become a business "need-to-do."

Let me break down the shift across a few key areas:

1. Trust Has Become the Most Expensive "Product"

In the past, we used apps without much thought to "where's my data going?" or "is this company reliable?" Now it's different. News of data breaches is constant, making everyone wary.

  • An analogy: Would you save money in a bank whose vault is often reported as robbed? Definitely not.
  • Similarly: Users won't confidently hand over their personal information, chat logs, spending habits – their "data assets" – to a company that's "unreliable" on privacy protection.

When something like the LINE leak of millions of user records happens, the biggest blow to the company isn't the regulatory fine; it's the collapse of user trust. Users uninstall apps, use them less, and refuse new data permissions. This loss of trust is incredibly hard to fix, no matter how much you spend on marketing.

So, a company excelling at data privacy and governance is actively building a "trustworthy" brand image. The message, "I feel safe using their products," might become more compelling than "their product has more features / is cheaper." That's core competitiveness.

2. High-Quality Data is the "Premium Fuel" of the AI Era

AI and big models are all the rage now. But an AI's "IQ" depends entirely on the data it's fed.

  • The Old Way (Compliance-Driven): Data governance meant labeling, classifying, encrypting data just to stay compliant. It was like locking messy ingredients in a warehouse with "Do Not Touch" signs. Safe? Yes. Usable? Hardly – "dead data."
  • The New Paradigm (Competitiveness-Driven): Good data governance isn't just about "locking up" data; it's about "managing" and "utilizing" it effectively. It ensures data accuracy, integrity, and availability. Think of a top-notch food supply chain: it guarantees safety and washes, sorts, preps ingredients, ready for chefs (AI models and analysts) to create delicious dishes (business insights and smart services).

Simply put, Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO). The stronger a company's data governance, the higher the data quality, the smarter its AI models, the sharper its decisions. Isn't that the ultimate hardcore competitiveness?

3. Moving from "Passive Defense" to "Active Offense," Creating New Business Models

Chasing compliance alone means endlessly scrambling after new regulations like GDPR or the Personal Information Protection Law – exhausting. But companies embedding governance into their core capability can leverage it to create new value.

  • Example: Apple: Apple epitomizes turning privacy protection into a core advantage. Its ads constantly stress, "Your iPhone. Your Privacy." Its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature gives users control over app tracking. While ostensibly protecting users, it actively reshaped digital advertising rules, making Apple's ecosystem more appealing. That's going on the offensive.
  • Another Example: "Privacy Computing" Technology: Innovative companies are working on cool tech like "privacy computing". In essence, it allows analyzing data without ever seeing the raw data.
    • Analogy: You and I want to know who earns more but don’t want to reveal our exact salaries. Using this tech, we give encrypted salary data to a "middleman." It computes and only tells us the result (e.g., "You earn more"), but never learns our exact figures.
    • Companies mastering such tech can venture into previously impossible businesses. For instance, multiple hospitals could collaborate to train a better medical AI model without sharing actual patient records. This is a whole new playing field, born from data governance capability.

To Summarize

Past: Data Governance was a 'Cost Center,' focused on avoiding disaster. Future: Data Governance is a 'Value Center,' focused on achieving results, even major breakthroughs.

The core logic behind this shift is:

  1. Trust as an Asset: User trust becomes directly monetizable brand equity.
  2. The Fuelization of Data: High-quality, well-governed data is the decisive fuel for future AI and business intelligence.
  3. The Productization of Competence: Superior data governance competence itself can be developed into new services and products, enabling companies to outmaneuver competitors stuck in mere compliance.

For companies like LY Corporation, this crisis is both a challenge and an opportunity. If they truly learn the lesson, upgrading data governance and privacy from a "compliance task" to a "top-tier strategy," genuinely rebuilding user trust, they could turn this tuition fee into a ticket for competing at a higher level in the future. Conversely, resorting to only quick fixes and reactive compliance might truly mean being left behind by the times.

Created At: 08-15 06:03:03Updated At: 08-15 10:33:44