Data security is big business, as evidenced by the impact of the 'Heartbleed' bug, and it is an area that banks should be instinctively moving towards.

The hacking of the Canadian tax authority website and the UK’s parenting site Mumsnet make it almost inevitable that a security breach is coming to a website near you some time very soon. The impact could be anything from mildly irritating to catastrophic if it leads to financial loss. The experts say you need to have a different password and log in for every site you use. So, that means at least 20 passwords to take care of bank accounts, social media, utilities, shopping sites etc. Thanks, but I am having problems remembering two or three. What's the solution?

Clearly, I need a safe place to store my data and then access websites through the storage intermediary rather than going direct. This way I only need one password to the storage intermediary and can access pre-approved sites using the same data.

It is a bit like the role banks play in keeping deposits safe and making payments on my behalf to all kinds of counterparties. This being the case, maybe this is the new role the banks have been looking for – data security – that will keep their business safe from alternative payments providers.

There have been lots of discussions in banking about big data and how banks have huge amounts of data that can be used for marketing purposes. Merchants can offer products to select groups of customers using this data and pay the banks a percentage of their sales. But, so far, bank clients have been lukewarm on this idea – they get more consumer offers but so what?

The ‘so what’ is if banks could offer customers data security services and in return use the data for marketing purposes and then, on top, pay the client a small fee (similar to interest on a savings account) for data use. The banks then earn this back many times over in merchant commissions. Now that starts to look like a proposition from which all three parties – banks, merchants and clients – benefit.

Service design company Fjord, recently acquired by Accenture, is starting to think about these kinds of issues. Its chief client officer Mark Curtis says: “Is the role of unlocking the value of data going to be done by the banks or will it be companies such as Google and Amazon? It would be a natural fit for banks as they are intermediaries and market makers.” Fjord has already worked with a number of banks, including Turkey’s Garanti, Spain’s BBVA and the US's Citibank.

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