PROJECT BIG DATA

Group C – BI Minor
November 25th 2016

Ramin Aiassi, Joep Jacobs, Sven Kerkhof, Thijs Reijnaerts, Wiek Stroux, Dean Farras Narendra
Preface
We are a group of six bachelor students studying the minor of Enterprise Resource Planning
& Business Intelligence at Fontys University of applied sciences in fall 2016.
This portfolio has been made for the subject of Big Data (BGDT).
As the final hand in for this subject students are required to choose a company that catches
their interest and triggers their imagination regarding Big Data (BD).
Task of the group is to analyse this company and create BD possibilities for this company. In
our case our choice of case study is the MasterCard Corporation.

Furthermore, we would like to use this opportunity to thank Ludo Sak for his help during this
project.

On behalf of group C, we hope you enjoy reading this portfolio.

Reading Guidelines
The guidelines how to read this document,

1. You can easily take a look to our assignment trough our table of content.
2. On the Table of Content, The whole document has been devided to 5 tasks, each task
is assigned with the assignment number and the correspondent week that pertinent
session took place.

1|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

 Table of Contents
PREFACE......................................................................................................................................................... 1

TASK DIVISION.............................................................................................................................................. 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................................................................. 3
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY................................................................................................................................. 4

TASK 1............................................................................................................................................................ 6

1. ASSIGNMENT............................................................................................................................................. 7
1.2 COMPANY SCOPE......................................................................................................................................... 8
1.3. BIG DATA...................................................................................................................................................... 9

TASK 2............................................................................................................................................................ 0

2. ASSIGNMENT............................................................................................................................................. 1
2.1 BUSINESS PURPOSES MASTERCARD REGARDING BIG DATA...................................................................... 1
2.2 CONCRETE BIG DATA OUTCOMES................................................................................................................. 1

TASK 3............................................................................................................................................................ 2

3. ASSIGNMENT............................................................................................................................................. 3
3.1 COMPANY PURPOSE.................................................................................................................................... 3
3.2 POTENTIAL TECHNOLOGY METHODS............................................................................................................ 3
3 IMPLEMENTATION............................................................................................................................................. 4
REDUCE ANALYSIS TIME..................................................................................................................................................... 4
CREDIT RISK MANAGEMENT................................................................................................................................................. 5

TASK 4............................................................................................................................................................ 0

4. ASSIGNMENT............................................................................................................................................. 1
4.1 HARDWARE................................................................................................................................................. 1
4.2 SOFTWARE..................................................................................................................................................... 3
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................................................... 4

TASK 5............................................................................................................................................................ 0

5. ASSIGNMENT............................................................................................................................................. 1
5.1 THE NECESSITY OF THE CONSUMPTION OF ANALYTICS .............................................................................. 1
5.2 POTENTIAL BIG DATA VISUALISATION FOR MASTERCARD.........................................................................3
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................................................... 3

TASK 6............................................................................................................................................................ 4
6. ASSIGNMENT.................................................................................................................................................. 5
HOW MASTERCARD USE PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT IT COLLECTS......................................................6

BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................................... 11
Management summary
MasterCard World Wide is an American multinational financial corporation located in New
York with a total of 10.300 employees. MasterCard is a company which collects massive
amounts of data by having the purchase transactions of all their customers. They already use
this data for five primary reasons, which are: marketing, fraud detection, risk management,
law enforcement and getting a clear picture of their customer.

(To be completed on last version of this document)

3|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

Introduction
This portfolio is written in collaboration of six students with each a different background in
study or nationality. This portfolio contains assignments of the subject Big Data done by these
students. The assignments are an exercise to prepare these students for their three exams and
achieve the learning goals of the BGDT course.

For the weekly assignments we had to choose a company. To write a excellent report, we needed
to think of a company which had real potential regarding Big Data analytics. For this reason we
chose the company MasterCard. A huge company with a significant amount of data. Not just any
type of data, but private financial data. Imagine the potential they have with this data.

In this report we are going to talk about the current usage of Big Data within the company, the
further possibilities if the company expands on its analytics, and more.
 Task 1
Week 2
Big Data and its importance

Book: Big Data, Big Analytics

Chapter 1

5|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

1. Assignment
The first question of this project was to choose a company that catches our interest and
triggers our imagination regarding Big Data (BD), as is or is not using BD. We chose
MasterCard Worldwide, hereafter noted as MasterCard, an American multinational financial
corporation. This company collects massive data by having the purchasing information of
their customers. There are many possibilities with this BD, which is further explained in the
chapters to come. In the first chapter the chosen company is described in its size, structure,
geolocations, product, e.a.

1.1. Company description

Throughout the world, the principal of MasterCard is to process payments between the
banks of merchants and the card issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use
the MasterCard debit and credit cards to make purchases.[ CITATION Wik16 \l 1043 ] In
1966 various banks decided to create the Interbank Card Association. Three years later the
Master Charge name and logo were introduced: two circles overlapping each other. In 1979
the new company's name became MasterCard. The MasterCard International Global
headquarters is located in New York, USA.

In total approximately 10,300 employees were operative at MasterCard in 2015. All those
employees work according to the following mission and vision:

Vision
"A World beyond Cash"

Mission

"Every day, everywhere, we use our technology and

expertise to
make payments safe, simple and smart"

[ CITATION www16 \l 1043 ]

1.2 Company scope
MasterCard has customers all over the world. That is made visual via the figure below. The
figure shows in which industries MasterCard is currently operating and what the most usual
business sizes are, using MasterCard. Of course there are a lot of consumers all over the
world that use MasterCard for purchasing.

Figure 1: Customer segments of MasterCard

[ CITATION Mas164 \l 1043 ]

MasterCard does not have a very clear scope in which branches they operate, because they
integrated in about every branch. They have specific products that are created for different
targets. They have three primary product groups. These products groups are credit cards,
prepaid cards and debit cards.
 Credit cards:
o MasterCard credit cards gives you the financial freedom that your different
priorities and lifestyles needs.
 Prepaid cards:
o MasterCard prepaid cards offers convenience and control. You load a prepaid
amount of money on this card and are able to buy all things where you
normally would use cash.
 Debit cards:
o MasterCard debit cards offers you a worldwide acceptance and benefits of
MasterCard cards, combined with direct deduction of money from your
account
Within the credit and debit cards there are different types of cards to give a completer
product for everyone’s preference, and thus reaching somewhat every branche.

[ CITATION Mas165 \l 1043 ]

7|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

1.3. Big data

Collected data by MasterCard

The standard information provided includes the date of a purchase, the place of the
purchase, including the name of the merchant, city, state, amount of the purchase and a
transaction reference number. [ CITATION Con09 \l 1043 ]

Reason for collecting this data

MasterCard tracks their customers for the following five primary reasons

- Marketing;
- Fraud detection;
- Risk management;
- Law enforcement;
- Creating a pretty clear picture of their customer.[ CITATION Con09 \l 1043 ]

Relevance data
As said, MasterCard currently uses their collected data for five primary reasons. These five
primary reasons are further explained in the next paragraph.

Marketing
The data is used for offering additional products. For example, when someone buys a cycle
with a credit card he or she is probably next searching for shoes and a helmet. This is
information they can sell to a shoe or helmet store. The shoe or helmet store can send
advertising leaflets to the customer, or try to persuade him or her with internet ads. This
adds value to MasterCard and to the store.

Fraud detection
MasterCard monitors their customer’s purchases patterns to detect fraud or other illegal
activities.

Risk management
MasterCard analyses their customer’s behavior to detect a ‘greater risk customer’. For
example, when a customer is consistently over their credit limit. He or she is a greater risk of
not paying their bills, so a minimal debit limit can be attached to the customer’s card.

Law enforcement
Different law enforcement agencies can subpoena MasterCard’s records to find out
information concerning a crime. The data which MasterCard collects can be useful to find
out information about the criminal. MasterCard cooperation with this process, can increase
their likeability
Creating a picture of their customer
‘Depending on how extensively you use your credit card, they conceivably have a very clear,
distinct picture of an individual.’ For example, if you buy your medicines with your credit
card they know what kind of illness you have. Imagine what value this information has for an
insurance company, and what they will pay for it. Or a person who is always behind on his or
her payment bills. If this information is sold to a bank, where the customer is currently
applying for a mortgage, the bank probably will not grand one.

‘Depending on how extensively you use your credit card, they

conceivably have a very clear, distinct picture of an individual.’

-- Paul Stephens     
privacy rights expert
[ CITATION Con09 \l 1043 ]

What are the opportunities for MasterCard considering big data?

Currently the opportunities with big data look limitless. But where does this fictional limitless
line end? That is the question that will be answered in this paragraph, by creatively thinking
out of the box and explaining several opportunities
MasterCard can implement in their business strategy and
revenue model.

Opportunities

A Reduce analysis time

One of the opportunities for MasterCard is to reduce the
time it takes the company to analyze the data. There is an
opportunity in reducing the time and complexity of
preparing data for analysis. This is a very important
matter when dealing with a variety of data types and
formats. [ CITATION inf16 \l 1043 ]

B Credit Risk Management

Another opportunity for MasterCard is to reduce risks of
people that are not able to pay their debts. MasterCard can use the data of people that is
available about previous incidents of those people not being able to pay their debts. With
that information they can choose to give these people their money against higher interest
rates or not giving them a credit card at all because they could not handle it in the previous
time

9|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

 Task 2
Week 3
Industry Examples of Big Data

Book: Big Data, Big Analytics Emerging Business Intelligence and

Analytic Trends for Today's Businesses (Wiley CIO)

Chapter 2
2. Assignment
In this part, we will take a deeper look what business purposes and outcomes that big data
can bring to our previously chosen company, Master Card.

2.1 Business purposes MasterCard regarding Big Data

MasterCard has a lot of big data of all the transactions that people are making all over the
world. The things what they can do with this information can be endless, but for business
purposes it can become useful too. As described above the opportunities with big data are to
reduce analysis time and credit risk management. The business purposes for these two
opportunities are described below

Reduce analysis time

Reducing analysis time is not only good for the cost of employees, but it can give you an
advantage in making decisions against other companies that are slower in decision making.
The fast decision making can be very useful when you made a wrong decision for example
you can analyze this decision and can return or adjust your decision faster than other
companies could. The possible risk, if big data is not supported with other supporting aspect
such as the process and the human itself. The technology will be a money burning.

Credit risk management

The business purpose of ‘credit risk management’ is to know who probably is able and not
able to pay their debts. With this information they can optimize interest rates for different
classes in their products, so they can minimize the risk they are going to take with loaning
money to a customer.

2.2 Concrete Big Data outcomes

Reduce analysis time

As stated above, big data can save a lot of time and money for the company. The company
doesn’t need to hire analysis as much as in the past because big data can do analysis on their
own. The outcome from big data will be more accurate too. Because sometimes when
human do the analysis, his psychology or emotion get involved which means it is not good
for the outcome. Besides that, the outcome will be faster so that it can be executed faster to
bring the company to the next step.

Credit risk management

Big data can provide us a good credit risk management system. Because it can keep the
record of people who probably can pay and can’t pay. The first step to prevent that happen
is limiting the amount of a customer can spend. It’s based on the big data analytics result.
Probably it sounds unfair for all the customer, but this is the easiest way to do. Because this
rules itself for the sake of the customer.

1|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

 Task 3
Week 4
Big Data Technology

Book: Big Data, Big Analytics,

Chapter 3
3. Assignment
MasterCard uses analytics, but they can improve when they implement big data analytics.
These analytics have various purposes and numerous benefits. This chapter will elaborate
the aspects of using this technique, as in purpose, potential and implementation.

3.1 Company purpose

The following bullet points indicates different “data domain” categories of MasterCard.

 Handling the input data

 Handling the Information

Although the first bullet point requires vast amount of energy and effort for receiving
storing, processing and modifying the data, the second bullet point seems to bring way lot
more into the table with huge potential of progressive growth in user experience, Services
and financial benefits for the company itself.

 Privacy
 Analysis and services

Privacy is another huge crucial part of MasterCard’s core business.

Benefits from the handling information phase have huge impact on the services that
MasterCard can offer to its customer using that information in different perspective and
analysis.

3.2 Potential technology methods

The following points have listed the three different technology methods that has the
capability to help MasterCard with exploration of data and optimize each one of the above
“data domain” categories.

Cloud
Because of the significant amount of data generated consistently and repeatedly 24/7 by
MasterCard, they of course need to pay huge prices for storing those data in different major
companies that offer database support such as Microsoft and Oracle.

Nonetheless, moving into the cloud can bring in great benefits for the company.
It is much faster, much more accessible, much less risky and it also has less costs to store and
maintain comparing to the traditional way of storing data.

3|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

Software as a service
When it comes to handling big data, software’s that eases your understanding of the data
and information are inevitably crucial to company. Master Card could come up with very
valuable and useful application that would be improving user experience. Giving the users
the capability to see the stories inside their data on their MasterCard usage. This can be
done using applications and software that offers custom designed visual analytics
(dashboards). As the name already says: SaaS is software which is delivered as a service. It’s
the part of Cloud Computing concerned specifically with making software available online.

Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is a great way to capitalize on the external resources that can build
algorithms and predictive models for MasterCard to solve a bottle neck or finding better
solutions. Via networking people can be found to help MasterCard optimise their company.

3.3 Implementation
We have two problems, Reduce Analysis Time and Credit Risk Management. Tools and
Technologies will be involved in this problem. In short, technologies will be the backbone of
the tools. Suitable technologies for this problems are Cloud, SaaS and Crowd Sourcing. How
do these technologies help the company overcome the problems?

Reduce Analysis Time

Reducing analysis time will mostly be done by the analysts within the company using tools
that were not there for use before. Now there are new tools that can analyze big data even
when it is unstructured data. There are a few tools that would come in pretty handy for
reducing analyzing time, these tools are:

 Survey tools
Nowadays the surveys are not done by paper, but will be taken on electronic devices. Crowd
sourcing technology helps this approach. With this method, you have abig advantages to
reducing the analysis time. If you use the right survey tool, the survey’s results can just be
uploaded and be named in seconds. Then it can be uploaded in an analysis package that will
be explained below. Beside Crowd Sourcing, Cloud also helps Survey Tools in storing the
survey results.

 Analysis packages
There are more than one analysis packages to use. For example, to analyse the results of a
survey SPSS and R can be used. The program can download the results and then make the
data visual in different views. The visuals that can be made are boxplots and a lot of other
diagrams. These programs can do these things within a few clicks, when you had to do this
by hand and brain in the old days. This will save MasterCard a lot of time cracking the puzzle
of information. SaaS technology is suitable for Analysis Packages.[ CITATION Min13 \l 1043
]
  Dash boarding
Dash boarding can be helped with SaaS technology. When the analytics are done you have
some useful diagrams, but not everyone in the company has to get all the information. If you
want to save the time of employees looking for the diagrams that are relevant for their
function you can use a dash boarding tool like Qlikview and Power BI. These programs can
show you all the results of the data that is collected in just a few diagrams, this will save you
time.

Credit Risk Management

The credit risk management can be done with processing big data and turn in it in
information that tells the company or it is a good idea to give anyone a credit card or with a
higher interest rate, because of their past and way of life. There for you will have to make
use of data outside of your company. The company has to get interdependent, because they
have to base decisions on data from other companies that may not be right.

 Analytics
To gain a lot more information to investigate your new costumer you can construct
partnerships with other companies. These companies will help you find patterns in spending
like for example retailers. Almost every retailer uses a loyalty - or membership card, these
cards contain information on what the costumer bought over the last couple of months. Did
the costumer buy diapers or schoolbooks, you could see a pattern that the costumer has
children which may affect his creditability. Suitable technology to help analytics is crowd
sourcing technology. [ CITATION TBa13 \l 1043 ]

 Scoring
Predicting is also credit risk management, you have to predict if your costumer is going or is
able to pay the loan back. When a predictive model is used the data will based on clear
numbers and not emotions. SAAS technology helps the Scoring process.

Business perspective must be taken to account in order to maximize the performance of the
technology. There are some perspectives when seeing this technology.

5|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

3.4 Benefits of the Technology
By implementing the technologies, we have more benefits than just overcoming the
problems. The benefits can be felt by the business wise and the technology wise. Here are
some benefits that can be brought by the technology.

Employee
All departments have to see the benefits of the new information system. There will be some
resistance from a few employees, because they want to work like they always did. These
employees have to be convinced to the benefits. Also, Human Resource department can
arrange a training for the employees who will interact with the technology. Because when
that is not done and you implement the system. The system will fail or will not be used in an
optimal position.
When that are done, the departments should work communicate of what information they
need for certain decisions they should make. Communication outside a system is still very
important to have the system work for you.

Cost
By using these technologies, it can reduce the cost compared to traditional method. The
company doesn’t need to purchase hardware for the data center and operation cost of the
data center, like the datacenter area. Beside the initial cost, the company can reduce the
maintenance cost of the technologies. Because maintenance and updates are taken care by
the service provider.

Mobility
This perspective can give advantage to the employee. Because it can give employees
flexibility in term of working area. When the employee are unable to come to the office he
can work from home or anywhere he is right now. This is also supported by the fact that
these technologies has almost 100% uptime.

When you take all of this into account there will not be a lot of problems. Because everyone
has the same point of view about the technology and the technology can be used in maximal
performance.
 Task 4
Week 7
Information Management

Book: Big Data, Big Analytics

Chapter 4

4. Assignment
Information Management (Company Hardware and Software)
The objective of this chapter is to get acquainted with topics such as the big data foundation
and the available platforms for big data computing and analytics. We will also have a glance
on big data computational limitations and the emerging technologies in big data. Then as
more practical approach we try to choose an ideal platform of choice for master cards due to
the company’s fundamental needs.
To result in a sensible description for the assignment it has been broken down into two
questions for both part of discussion which is hardware and software related.

4.1 Hardware
Available hardware foundations
The following three are the available type of hardware foundations at the moment in time:
 Clusters or grids
 Massively Parallel Processing (MPP)
 High Performance Computing (HPC)
[ CITATION Min13 \l 1043 ]

The following table indicates different levels of scoring grade for each quality category for 3
available hardware foundations

Figure 4.1 (Hardware choice score table)

+ Suitable hardware foundation for MasterCard 

High Performance Computing (HPC)

Banking requires the ability to process large amounts of data and perform transactions
within milliseconds. Any sort of latency in any level of amount can result in significant loss
for different stakeholders. Particularly in a corporation like MasterCard which is dealing with
huge amount of data load on daily basis. HPC enables unique speed and scale for all
transactional, analytical and hybrid applications across any data store.
In HPC environments most of the calculation is done in memory, which renders the highest
computational performance possible. HPC environments are designed for high-speed
floating point. HPC seems to be the ideal choice for MasterCard considering the factors of
security and scalability that it provides.
The value being created by using HPC is significant and strategic thus the cost is not
considered the most important consideration for its customer. Its customers are usually
organizations and business units that demand a very high scalability and computational
performance just as it is the case in MasterCard.

Why not the other choices?

1|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

On the other hand MPP and clusters or grids choices are not suitable due to lack of security
factors mostly.

For example in cluster or grids, servers are loosely coupled and networked together for
distributing workloads. This choice particularly cannot be an option for MasterCard since the
server security is very important for the company thus they cannot simply afford to have
their data on servers that are being shared and networked with distributing workloads.

And considering MPP would also not be the best choice since MPP appliances place the
storage, memory, and compute into a single machine that is optimized for performance and
scalability. Although this can be thought as an advantage but it can also be a weak point for
credit card companies as big as Master Cards. Where having the storage memory and
compute into a single machine might not be the wisest choice.
[ CITATION Min13 \l 1043 ]
4.2 Software
Available Software Foundation
There are 2 Fundamental Software for Big Data:
 Hadoop File System
 Traditional Data Warehouse

The following table indicates different levels of scoring grade for each quality category for 2
available software foundations.

Software Foundation HDFS Traditional Data Warehouse

SetupT Not Required Required
Type of Data Not Limited Limited
Amount of Stored Data Not Limited Limited
Hardware Exploitation Yes Sometimes No
Automatic Work Division Yes No
Fault Tolerant Yes No

Figure 4.2 Software choice score table

Suitable Software Foundation for MasterCard

Hadoop File System (HDFS)

 MasterCard Has a Lot of Unstructured Data

Because HDFS doesn’t require setup in order to store the data. You can just dump all
those unstructured data and HDFS will automatically store it on the right place.

Beside that, because all those data are unstructured there must be a lot of different
data types. It is an advantage to use HDFS because it can store all of the data type
without having to worry if HDFS can store it or not.

 MasterCard Receive Infinite Amount of Data

MasterCard receives unlimited amount of data everyday. So it requires a software
that can handle unlimited amount of Data. Unlike Traditional Data Warehouse,
Hadoop can easily handle any amount of data.

 MasterCard Wants to Invest on Something Economist

Most of the company wants a flexible software. Flexible means the software is not
depending on the hardware. HDFS has a good Hardware Exploitation feature. Means
it doesn’t depend on the hardware in order to store data. Also, in order to prevent
any crash during a process caused by the hardware. HDFS is a fault tolerant software.
Means it will automatically recover failure process.

3|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

Conclusion
Looking at the 2 figures of 4.1 and 4.2 clearly summarizes the reasons for choosing HPC
environment for hardware and HDFS software environment to be used in MasterCard. The
columns above indicate the most important factors in concern of MasterCard that are
security, scalability, performance and cost. And HPC and HDFS certainly offers the best
foundations for MasterCard needs at this moment in time.

Hardware
HPC environments such as Cray Computers and IBM Blue Gene.
Each parallel-compute platform uses one or more of these software parallelization
techniques. It’s very typical for HPC environments to use MPI (Message passing interface).

The following graph shows the typical work flow in High performance computing
environments.

Software
HDFS software environment Hadoop.
MapReduce is typically used in conjunction with HDFS
There are also implementations of MapReduce for
data warehouses. In the MapReduce framework, a
master controller distributes work via a Mapper
function to all of the available processors. Each
of the processors independently performs the
Mapper task and the results are fed into a
Reducer task, which summarizes the work
from Mappers.
 Task 5
Week 9
Business Analytics

Book: Big Data, Big Analytics

Chapter 5

5. Assignment
In this chapter, we will explain the theory around the consumption of analytics. Analytics can
be very important to all sorts of companies but it must be used the right way. The
communication cycle helps organisations to organize the implementation analytics with big
data into their company. The analytics can be used for prediction, description and
prescriptive situations which are very useful to a management of a company to handle
certain situations. [ CITATION WuJ13 \l 1043 ]

5.1 The necessity of the consumption of analytics

Analytics can be very important to organisations, the information which analytics were built
on were with a lot of noise which had no use for your specific organisation. With big data
and the development of increased computer power the world is ready to:” ride the perfect
wave”.
These analytics can be used for different of situations:

- Descriptive analytics
- Predictive analytics
- Prescriptive analytics
Descriptive analytics
Descriptive analytics are analysis which describe the problems or situation which already
have happened. It can give management information what did happen, if it happens more
often and where the root of the problem lies. This information is useful for the organisation
to help them cope with a similar situation or problem in the future. Another word for
descriptive information is business intelligence.

Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics are analysis in which the situation or problems are going to be predicted.
From a management point of view this can be the best analytics because predicting the
future can help them make better decisions in which they separate themselves with the
competition. The question: “What if” is the motto of this analysis, this analysis is the hardest
one to create but also the most rewarding.

Prescriptive analytics
Prescriptive analytics are analysis in which the analytics explain why certain situations are
happening. The result suggests different option with each of their different outcomes which
is very useful to management. Continually the analytics can be improved with more new
data in which the predictive and descriptive decision are better grounded.
The outcome of the different types of analytics become more important to management,
because when done right the extra information is high of quality, real time and even
predictive.[ CITATION Min13 \l 1043 ]

1|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

Communication cycle
To make consumption of analytics more consumable for the companies and their employees,
the companies can use the communication cycle model.

Create
The first stage is creating the information out of the
analytics, this part is done by the ICT department.
The other departments don’t have an immediate
influence in this stage.

Communication
In this stage you will take out the information of
your own department and share it with others. The
company has to sell their analytics to a wider group of
decision makers in most cases the daily users.
Figure 5.1 Communication Cycle 1

Implement
According to the book: “When analytics are consumed throughout the whole organization it
is often a strong leadership culture. The most important part of implementing this behaviour
of consume all the data requires to set up all the right information sources to create the best
infrastructure possible to collect all the right data.”

When the analytics are implemented MasterCard has to think about their change
management. If their employees are unaware of this change, there could be a few
complications that could have be prevented with good communication. The complications
can be that the employees are not willing to work with the new analytics or systems, so
when MasterCard uses a good change management the change will become an advantage.

Measure
Measuring the impact of the analytics is important because the analytics are only hard
numbers. These hard numbers are calculated well but the human touch of business intellect
is not taken into the analytics.

Align incentives
Using analytics as a basis of decision making, then it must be in a structured way. The
emotional side of making decisions is to employees the common way to go but to break this
ritual strong incentive must be created to overcome this problem. This method is not bullet
proof though.

Develop cognitive repairs

Making decisions on an emotional motivation is always been the way to go, but now with
hard numbers and analysis it is hard to believe if it doesn’t feel right to the employees. The
decision makers must be aware of this intrinsic conflict on which they should prove that the
analytics are the best option. The convincing part will take strong leadership skills but when
option is proven right every single time the biases the decision where taken decrease and
analytics become more important. [ CITATION Min13 \l 1043 ]

5.2 Potential Big Data visualisation for MasterCard

In the previous paragraph the different kinds of analysis were discussed. Now, let's see which
of those analysis could be useful for MasterCard and especially for the management within
the organisation.

The descriptive analysis gives an organisation data about a situation that has already
occurred. So for instance, PR management can look back at a finished projected. They can
analyse the time spend on it, the amount of people working on it and the result that has
been delivered. These data can tell what could be done differently to improve the efficiency
and result during next projects.

The predictive analysis could provide data about a possible opportunity for the organisation.
For example, the Marketing department is working on a new sponsorship deal between
MasterCard and a big worldwide football tournament. The Marketing management would
like to know how many people can be reached with the sponsorship and how high the
conversion rate will be. This data can be obtained out of results from previous sponsorships
or data that is provided by the sponsor. This could be data about the amount of viewers they
expect to have during the tournament. So with this analysis, MasterCard can calculate their
Return on Investment for the sponsorship and predict whether this deal is going to have
positive effect on the organisation.

The prescriptive analysis can be used when a problem occurs within the organisation. So,
let's say that the amount of customers for an organisation are decreasing within a certain
period of time. The Sales management would like to know the reason for this to happen.
They can receive data about the current customers, the potential customers and also the
customers that used to buy at the organisation. With this data, the Sales management can
contact customers and ask them what the reason would be to buy at their organisation and
also what would be their reason to buy at a competitor. This of course, depends on whether
the customer answers or not. But with the data coming out of the analysis, the Sales
department can also discover patterns in other factors like geological factors. There are lots
of possibilities and the organisation will for sure be able to come up with a solution for the
problem.

Conclusion
So, the three different kinds of analysis were discussed. Considering big data, we can look at
the descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analysis.
All different kinds of analysis can have a helpful function within the organisation for the
management of the various departments. The descriptive analysis gives an organisation data
about a situation that has already occurred. The predictive analysis could provide data about
a possible opportunity for the organisation. And the prescriptive analysis can be used when a
problem occurs within the organisation. In this assignment we already discussed possibilities
for the Sales, Marketing and PR management for MasterCard. So, we saw that MasterCard
has a lot of possibilities regarding these different analysing techniques

3|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

 Task 6 Week 11
Privacy and Ethics

Book: Big Data, Big Analytics

Chapter 7

6. Assignment
6.1 Introduction
As the last task of this project we are going to have a look on a very important aspect of big
data which is the Privacy and ethics inside particular centre minded on MasterCard affairs.
This is a very important part of the big data phenomena for number of reasons. Some
concerns has to do with potential consequence s of not having privacy. Some other concerns
are more fundamental, which should do with touching the essence of human identity.
Whichever the matters it should be taken seriously by the organizations and individuals.

“People can be harmed or debilitated if there is no restriction on the public's access to and
use of personal information.”
“To lose control of one's personal information is in some measure to lose control of one's life
and one's dignity. Therefore, even if privacy is not in itself a fundamental right, it is necessary
to protect other fundamental rights.”[CITATION Mic121 \l 1043 ]

6.2 Company Status

MasterCard current privacy status

MasterCard privacy policy is publicly available through their website. They have described
different aspects of privacy concerns to clear out frustrations regarding this issue for their
customer.

In their policy they elaborate on the type of personal information that they collect, how they
use this information and with whom they share it.

MasterCard is in fact proud of the way they approach this matter, although they deal with all
kind of data sets but they have limited data types that they collect.

For example, they do not collect individual’s name or their email adresses. They store the
account number, the date, time and location that transaction took place and the merchant
information about the transaction.

Yet they believe that some people might be smart and want to share more data than some
others to benefit from that information in terms of luxury or accessibility etc. For these
customers they also made it possible to manually enter more personal information in case of
requirement by the customer.

MasterCard also describes the measure they take to protect security of the information and
how customers can content them about their privacy practices.

How MasterCard uses personal information that it collects

MasterCard may use the personal information that it obtains about you to: (Please note that
not all usage examples been mentioned in this document.)

5|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

How Mastercard uses your information Examples

 Authorization
 Clearing
 Chargebacks
Process your payment transactions  Other related dispute
resolution activities

 Claims
 Liabilities
 Manage risk exposure
Protect against and prevent fraud,  Franchise quality with
unauthorized transactions. respect to the integrity
and security.

Provide, administer and communicate with About products, services,

customers offers, programs and
promotions of Mastercard.

Operate, evaluate and improve our business Analytical and predictive

models and rules
Publish business directories Analyses may include
business contact information
Anonymizing personal information and
preparing and furnishing aggregated data
reports showing anonymized information

Figure 6.1 (Table of Information usage by Mastercard)

[ CITATION Mas163 \l 1043 ]

In overall the type of information that MasterCard can collect and customers can share
personally to MasterCard are as follows:

 Contact information (such as name, postal or e-mail address, and phone number)
 Business contact information (such as job title, department and name of
organization)
 Username and password
 Payment account information
 Contact information for friends or other people you would like us to contact
 Content you provide (such as photographs, articles and comments)
 Content you make available through social media accounts or memberships with
third parties
 Mobile device unique identifier
 Geo-location data
 Other information (such as shopping behavior and preferences, language preference,
age, date of birth, gender and family status)

How MasterCard hold and protect personal information

“The security of your personal information is important to MasterCard. We are committed to
protecting the information we collect. We maintain administrative, technical and physical
safeguards designed to protect the personal information you provide or we collect against
accidental, unlawful or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure or use.
We use SSL encryption on a number of our websites from which we transfer certain personal
information.”
[ CITATION Mas162 \l 1043 ]

How long MasterCard stores your information for?

“MasterCard stores personal information only for as long as it is necessary for the fulfillment
of the purpose for which the personal information was collected, unless otherwise required
or authorized by applicable law. We take measures to destroy or permanently de-identify
personal information if required by law or if the personal information is no longer required
for the purpose for which we collected it.”
[ CITATION Mas162 \l 1043 ]

7|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

 Privacy shield rules
Since MasterCard is an American company while operating in a country like the
Netherlands which is in the European Union they need to follow the existing laws
regarding privacy as well.

The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield imposes stronger obligations on U.S. companies to protect
Europeans’ personal data. It reflects the requirements of the European Court of Justice,
which ruled the previous Safe Harbour framework invalid. The Privacy Shield requires the
U.S. to monitor and enforce more robustly, and cooperate more with European Data
Protection Authorities. It includes, for the first time, written commitments and assurance
regarding access to data by public authorities.

This new agreement on data privacy includes the following element into concern

1. Commercial sector: Strong obligations on companies and robust enforcement.

2. U.S. Government access: Clear safeguards and transparency obligations.
3. Monitoring: Annual joint review mechanism.
4. Redress: -Several redress possibilities:
a) Directly with the company
b) Alternative Dispute Resolution:
c) With the Data Protection Authority
d) Privacy Shield Panel

What privacy shield means For MasterCard? As an American company which is

trading with EU this agreement for MasterCard means

 Self-certify annually that they meet the requirements.

 Display privacy policy on their website.
 Reply promptly to any complaints.
 (If handling human resources data) Cooperate and comply with European Data
Protection Authorities.

[ CITATION Eur161 \l 1043 ]

The current ethical position of MasterCard
Ethical position of MasterCard
MasterCard is aware of the sensitive information they have in their company. For that
reason, they comply with the seven principles of Privacy Shield. The regulation has a
negative effect of the company, because every law will cost them money. With the
regulations of Privacy Shield they have to keep improving the way they have to handle their
extracted data that is most of the time very sensitive personal information about their
customers. MasterCard had even the regulation that if you do not want that they store your
data, then you can acknowledge that they have to delete your information. This function is
easy to find and not difficult to apply, this means that they are very transparent in their
policies.
[ CITATION Mas15 \l 1043 ]
MasterCard code of conduct
The company MasterCard is very serious about their ethical position. They have a document
called ‘MasterCard Code of Conduct’ where you can read about their policies to remain on
this ethical position. In this document, you can find things like what happens if an employee
violates their ethical code and what is in this code, if you read further you will find subjects
as how they act ethically and how the protect their assets and information.
[ CITATION Mas14 \l 1043 ]
Big Data as a product.
The product of Big Data of MasterCard is highly valuable to the merchants. The transactional
data which is created by the MasterCard costumers is collected by the MasterCard company.
This information can be bought as an analytic tool to the merchants. The personal
information which is in the transactional data is stripped so the information can’t be traced
to a specific person. This stripping is very important in the ethical stand point of MasterCard.
The economic gain is not above the personal infringement which is a good and ethical
behavior.
[ CITATION Mar13 \l 1043 ]

9|Big Data Portfolio-Group C

6.2 Company Future
What privacy challenges does MasterCard have?

Velocity, volume, and variety of big data magnify security and privacy challenges. Streaming
data demands ultra-fast response times from security and privacy solutions. The use of large-
scale cloud infrastructures spread across large networks of computers, also increases the
attack surface of the entire system. In the following paragraphs, a few high-priority security
and privacy challenges are described. Also, the consequences for MasterCard in relation to
those challenges will be discussed.

Secure data storage and transactions logs

Data and transaction logs are stored in multi-tiered storage media. Manually moving data
between tiers gives the IT manager direct control over exactly what data is moved and when.
However, as the size of data set has been growing exponentially, scalability and availability
have lead to auto-tiering for big data storage management.
Auto-tiering solutions do not keep track of where the data is stored, which poses new
challenges to secure data storage for MasterCard.

End-point input validation/filtering

Many big data use cases in enterprise settings require data collection from many sources,
such as end-point devices.
A key challenge in the data collection process is input validation: how can the data be
trusted? MasterCard has to validate that a source of input data is not malicious and filter
malicious input from its collection. Input validation and filtering is a challenge for
MasterCard.

Real-time security/compliance monitoring

Real-time security monitoring has always been a challenge, given the number of alerts
generated by security devices. These alerts lead to many false positives at MasterCard, which
are mostly ignored or simply clicked away. This problem will increase for MasterCard with
big data, given the volume and velocity of data streams. However, big data technologies
might also provide an opportunity for MasterCard, in the sense that these technologies do
allow for fast processing and analytics of different types of data. Which in its turn can be
used to provide real-time detection based on scalable security analytics.

[ CITATION Clo12 \l 1043 ]

6.3 Group opinion on privacy and ethics
Wiek:

We think the behavior of MasterCard is very good towards the ethics of using data. They try
to secure their information as much as possible, they are transparent in using the personal
data and the economic gain isn’t above the infringement. The side note is that these subjects
are important parts of the image of MasterCard. When the state of mind would not be
ethical within the company the brand MasterCard will soon be declared bankrupt because
people do expect that any personal information especially with their money involved. We
think any kind of leak or miss use of the personal and transactional data will be the end for
this company.

Ramin: Privacy in its true means in technology means people knowing what they are signing
up for in plain English and repeatedly! When it comes to privacy and ethics we have to
remember to be optimistic if we would like to catch up with technology and use it in our
everyday life. We cannot simply afford to do so if we put in millions of restrictions and
limitations that would actually make us stop sharing data. There are always some people
which smartly want to share more data than others, ask them. Ask them every time. We
have to let customers know precisely what are we going to do with their data. How are we
going to use them, and what are its benefits and potential consequences. In this regard I
believe Mastercard is doing fairly well. Although their business is dependent on this security
issues yet they managed to keep a secure and safe brand while keeping an optimistic eye on
the customer’s behavior. And when it comes to international norms and laws they are doing
good if not extraordinary great, in terms of transparency responsibility and accessibility.

Dean: MasterCard respects all its client data. It can be seen on their privacy policy page on
their website. None of them violate the client privacy right. Also, MasterCard aware about
this because every day more people get concerned about their data which can lead to
misuse.

Joep: Big data information comes with some privacy/ethical problems. By using Internet and
various online challenges people automatically take part in this world. So, we are living in an
age that people should know which personal information is private and which information is
shared. Most people are aware of it, and some people even want to be found by sharing
their personal information. So it is part of the current time we live in.

Sven: MasterCard has a good policy regarding the ethics and privacy of their customers. They
have well thought of their strategies and visions and they know that people are more over
thinking about their privacy. They are very transparent and open about that policies and I
think they are managing their privacy and ethics regulations very well. I hope they will
continue their policies as well thought off as they are now.

Thijs: Accepting technology requires the acceptance of spreading your information. This can
refer to information you would like to keep private, which you would like to know if it
happens. The company we chose, MasterCard, is very transparent about their collected data,
11 | B i g D a t a P o r t f o l i o - G r o u p C
and the privacy regulations that come with it. Because people are becoming more aware of
the data collecting and their consequences, I personally think this is needed to continue
collecting data in the further.

6.4 opinion on following article

Thijs:
Sharing data is not necessary a bad thing, but sharing financial data is different. Still sharing
this data has its pro’s and con’s. So it is a good thing that the customer has the final say is
sharing or not sharing the data. A question that is not always asked.

Joep:
In the previous part I gave my opinion about privacy regarding people's personal information
in general. But this time, it's specifically focused on banking information. And this is a
sensitive topic for most people. I would not like to share my banking information to third
parties so for instance Facebook can show me my bank remainder. In my opinion, such
enterprises cannot be trusted with this very important information.
So I think it is very important that people's authorisation is needed to share this information.
That is a good thing, but I think most people won't agree to share this data.

Sven:
In my opinion it is a good thing that information from banks is going to be shared, because
some people who are not that good with taking care of their financial situation can be taken
care of faster. The only thing what I think is going to be a problem is that people do not want
to share their financial information, because it can work against them. When information has
been out there once it will not disappear at once when anyone says they do not want their
information shared. But I think overall it is a good thing that information is going to be
shared to improve the banks in the future.

Wiek:
I think that the legislation regarding opening up your bank information is a good thing if it is
done according to the laws. If a customer wants to open up his information it will be good
for them (and innovation) and if you don’t want to give your information it is also ok. I think
this sensitive information has to be given from the person who the information is from and
he or she can decide if the other financial services companies can use it.

Dean:
My opinion, according to the article, personal data usage by a party is not a problem as long
it is has a clear purpose and customers know that their data is being used. The article states,
“The parties must have clear purpose about the data and must be supervised by the EU
members” and “The parties can only access the data after the customers give permission to
the parties and it can be withdrawn anytime”. So, I think it won’t be a problem for us as long
as they obey what they state in the article. Also, we have a full control to allow them or not
because you will be the one who decide about your data can be used or not.

Ramin: The article is in Dutch and I can only get a rough translation. So I cannot really have
an opinion on this rather but generally from what I understand I can only mention that
transparency is obviously the path to build a trustable and secure environment as banks are
supposed to reflect.

13 | B i g D a t a P o r t f o l i o - G r o u p C
Group Grading Decision (To be filled)

Ramin:
Wiek:
Dean:
Sven:
Thijs:
Joep:

Task division

Timesheet Thijs Sven Wiek Joep Dean Ramin

Cover 20 Remade (5)
Preface 20     Rewrote(5)
Management 10
summary
Task 1 40 60
Task 2 50 30 30
Task 3 40 60
Task 4 30 60
Task 5 30 40
Task 6 50 40 40 60 45 150
Lay-out 20 30 30 180
Conclusion

Revisions Thijs Sven Wiek Joep Dean Ramin

Preface 20
Task 1 30 15
Task 2 30 10 15
Task 3 15 60 15
Task 4 30 15 40 30
Task 5 15
Task 6 30 60
Final Formatting 60 15 180
Excluded from the timesheet is the duration spend on the assignments in class.
Bibliography
( 1. )(2016). Opgehaald van Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterCard
information-age. (2016). Opgehaald van http://www.information-
age.com/technology/information-management/123460615/top-8-trends-big-
data-2016

Minelli, M. (2013). Big Data, Big Analytics. Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley and Sons.
Prater, C. (2009, January 13). Credit card purchase privacy. Opgehaald van
creditcards.com: http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-
purchase-privacy-1282.php

T. Baer, T. G. (2013, April ). Our insights new credit risk management models for the
unbanked. Opgehaald van Mckinsey.com: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/risk/our-insights/new-credit-risk-models-for-the-unbanked#0

Wu, J. (2013, March 25). Big data reduction: Understanding predictive analytics.
Opgehaald van Community Lithium: https://community.lithium.com/t5/Science-
of-Social-blog/Big-Data-Reduction-2-Understanding-Predictive-Analytics/ba-
p/79616

www.mastercard.com. (2016). Opgehaald van https://www.mastercard.us/en-

us/about-mastercard/who-we-are/vision-mission-values.html

(3.)A case study on Banking on HPC BY GridGain company.

https://www.gridgain.com/sites/default/files/GridGain_Case_Study_Bank.pdf

15 | B i g D a t a P o r t f o l i o - G r o u p C