Data are an increasingly prized and coveted source of information in the business world. Many researchers are now working flat out to extract information of interest, helping in decision-making procedures and bringing great benefits to companies and institutions.

On 2 to 4 May the Higher IT Engineering School of Valladolid Polytechnic University (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática de la  Universitat Politècnica de València: ETSINF-UPV) held TechFest 2017. This conference brought together top Big Data professionals to speak about the current trend and recent breakthroughs.

Carlos Sahuquillo, GMV’s cybersecurity consultant, member of the ISACA Valencia Chapter and the Cloud Security Alliance, was one of these keynote lecturers, giving the paper “What use do companies make of our data?” Carlos explained to the audience what type of information is kept by major firms on each one of us and with what purpose (sometimes simply to improve their service, other times for advertising purposes and yet others to earn money from this data). “In the future we will have proactive medicine drawn from the data captured daily by monitoring devices, wristband activity trackers and intelligent watches” explained Sahuquillo, with a nod towards GVM’s healthcare projects and experience.

The event’s prime aim was to drive technology and data management in the upcoming generations of IT, robotics and electronics professionals. Lectures, chats, workshops and competitions involving open data and related technologies made up the activity schedule of TechFest, an event organized by the Chair of Transparency and Data Management.

Summary video