Privacy Enhanced Computation
How many a time have you clicked on a website, and then gone back, because it asked your email address or contact number and you were just not sure of giving it away? When your email engine asks you to add your phone number for better safety of being locked out, how hesitant are you to fill in your details- or do you ‘skip for now’?
The internet is expanding- and better methods are being introduced to ensure that you’re not blocked out, but there is always this question hovering around asking “Is this safe?”. Each time we enter our confidential details, our fingers are crossed praying that what we entered will go and rest in safe hands. However, there is always a fairy godmother at the end of each bad story, and this is where Privacy Enhanced Computation or PECs come in.
PEC is a type of technology that helps achieve a high level of private data protection. This is considered as a methodology that supports data protection against third parties trying to access our data. As most of our transactions and activities happen through the internet, and we frequently enter our confidential details to get a lot of our work done and to complete it without further delay. As such, it is vital that a safe environment is available for every user to enter their details; one that ensures their privacy.
The data that is entered is usually encrypted, which means it is transformed to an unreadable format, and transmitted across the network to the recipient. When the data is received and accessed, the information is translated back into its original form. However, during this process where a user enters his/her details, to the final stage where the party handles the information, there is a possibility for the entered data to be hacked into by a third party. Thus, there is an essential need to ensure that the inputted data is to be accessed in safe hands and only to be used for the relevant purpose. Each user should be certain that the entered data is used according to the guidelines understood by all the relevant parties.
PECs work on this aspect, through various technologies which provide a safe environment by protecting data in different ways.
The most common technology is Homomorphic encryption; which is a methodology that facilitates third party providers to compute the data while it is encrypted. The data can be processed or manipulated but it cannot be decrypted, which means the data remains confidential.
Another type of privacy enhancing technology is Trusted execution environments; which stands as a safe environment for the main device to be separated from the operating system. These environments ask for further authentication; and can provide options such as whether the user can trust their device to log in, or forbid access to contacts, gallery etc.
The third main privacy enhancing technology is Multi-party computation; where data can be shared and analyzed amongst parties, but no one can see the initial data, and thus privacy isn’t violated. A similar technique to this known as Differential privacy, is an algorithm that analyzes data and generates statistics. Here data from an individual perspective is protected, and a general dataset is shown. Another main technique popular in PEC is Personal data store. In this practice, each individual has access to his/her own data, and can control the data, giving only a general access to others.
With the rise in modern technologies aiming to make life easier for people, innumerous sectors have digitalized their services, and this requires users to enter their details for proper user management. Most businesses handle internal or customer affairs by obtaining their emails, details, photos etc. Banks have almost all transactions carried online or via applications, where people enter their credit card details and numbers. The same goes to services in the health sector, with people entering all their personal details and records for better service and management. All of these sectors also conduct a lot of their services through web applications, which may also be prone to privacy hacking. As such, everyone deserves a say in knowing whether these details are being handled in the safest possible manner. Thus, the service providers must ensure a proper validation of privacy for all their customers.
Day by day, infinite data is being processed on the internet and this process is ever expanding. More users join the network that processes this information and they need to be ensured that the data they enter is safe in the right hands. At present there are new technologies on the rise, ones that aim to safeguard these data and create a better environment for the users that log on to the various services. With these new technologies circulating around privacy enhancing computation, this barrier can be overcome and security can be best assured.
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