As the official date for the UK’s Brexit looms, tech industry bosses in the UK have voiced concerns over the legal, technical and bureaucratic obstacles that have been created by the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Their biggest concern? Data liquidity.

As an EU member, Britain’s security and surveillance apparatus were previously exempt from privacy compliance evaluation but as a ‘third country’,  it will now have to demonstrate that EU citizen rights are adequately protected. This raises concerns for tech leaders, who say that UK’s 2016 ‘Investigatory Powers Act’ and the extension of surveillance powers contained within, will make it difficult for the UK to satisfy European privacy concerns. The result being that an agreement on ‘data protection equivalence’ may see extensive delays and result in restrictions on the ability for data to flow in and out of the EU/ UK.

Back home, the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has announced that it has chosen to build its new digital identity solution for secure cross-departmental data sharing in-house. The DTA agency, who had previously gone to market for advice on the alpha design of the solution before informing respondents that it wouldn’t proceed with buying a solution, has shared details on roll-out plan for the solution in a blog post last week.

In other news…

Location-based, social media app Foursquare has unveiled a new ‘Data dashboard’ for retailers and brands which allows them to tap into ‘foot traffic data’ to better understand spend patterns, customer demographics and benchmark against competitors within retail locations. The dashboard, described as ‘Google Analytics for the real world’ is aimed at in-house analyst teams and is the latest in a series of new B2B data service offerings from Foursquare.

WORTH A READ

U.S Officials have handed down a detailed account on just how hackers managed to breach security protocols at Yahoo and comprise 500 million user accounts in 2014. It’s claimed that they used a ‘cascading effect’ to gain further control within Yahoo systems, leading to further breaches. It’s pretty chilling stuff and a telling example of how hackers are evolving tactics to access valuable data.

Until next week.