Furry, fluffy pets bring us comfort in our homes, and similarly, Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) provide comfort by keeping your data safe. The following piece, Cloud, Data and PET Adoption, From Ntirety CEO Emil Sayegh was originally published in Forbes.
Cloud, Data And PET Adoption
Let’s face it— the world we live in is not a very private place. Try as we might, we can never really be left alone. We are always under the watchful eye of big data and in a state of constant connection. Before you think too long of how your fluffy cat, or a watchful dog will fit in a cloud privacy discussion, let’s break this down. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are a suite of privacy technologies that protect data and minimize exposure of unintended personal data, placing variable control of data in the hands of the user. An increase in PET adoption could change all that in the data world. This is about new and comprehensive integrations of privacy and security technologies, largely based on cloud tools and APIs that will evolve the nature of data itself.
Faster. Cheaper. Easier.
There is no denying that technologies have evolved along these lines over time. In the big picture, computer, storage, and cloud infrastructures have similarly become more of a commodity than ever before. Metric barriers will continue to be broken through innovations that lead on those three characteristics. The direction for data, however, is more sophisticated than that because we continually find new use cases for data. The future of cloud technologies is interwoven with the application of data science as they head forward on a course together that is rife with the implications of privacy and security. We are only at the beginning.
Cloud meets Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)
With roots that go back to early computing, you can find traces of PET technology and practices among everyday internet behaviors and tools. There are soft privacy technologies which are software-based, such as tunnel encryption (SSL/encryption), access controls, and data anonymity systems. There are also hard privacy technologies which include hardware VPNs, anonymous routing, and devices that leverage cryptography. Communication anonymizers hiding the real online identity (email address, IP address, etc.), Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID) , Homomorphic encryption, Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proof (NIZKs), Format-Preserving encryption (FPE), Differential Privacy, and Pseudonymization are other evolving forms of PETs.
It is an accepted fact that smartphones and apps are continually sharing location, usage data, and untold valuable information about that phone’s owner. From stores to street corners, highways, neighborhoods, and everything in between, video cameras are everywhere we can reasonably go. I haven’t even gotten to the invisible satellites that continually race around us in the heavens above and often cluttering our ability to star gaze.
The point is that the proliferation of technology, especially those of cloud and data technologies ricocheted past what would have been more favorable in terms of privacy by design. Privacy regulations have tried and had some effect, but the industry still endures painful and devastating breaches of sensitive data. Privacy regulations have always and will always lag behind technology and hackers. Building around this and scaling up securely is clearly a task that is too difficult for many enterprises to deploy on their own. PETs can bridge that gap, and maintain privacy even as the underlying computer technology evolves and morphs.
Collaboration: Trusting Zero Trust
As the proposition of PET grows, what is developing is a new horizon coined as collaborative computing. Its proposition is simple. Collectively, PETs are advancing into technology stacks with the aim of creating a continuously verified plane of data privacy, advanced processing, and ultimately, a complete shift in principles of how platform-based data communicate towards an ecosystem of data collaboration. In essence, through ensuring security and privacy, sharing data becomes a more inviting focus.
A New World of Data Enabled by Comprehensive Security
It is clear that the drive for greater data acceleration and global availability balanced with the increasing focus on security and privacy are on track for a significant breakthrough that can unlock dynamic data markets and economies of scale. For example, marketplaces will feature the ability to federate queries and share tranches of non-specific data instantly. Whether that outside party is a partner, supplier, consumer or supply chain, regardless of country, information can be shared instantly across the world.
The journey of cloud technologies and the data that comes with it have long counted on the tenets of security, privacy and integrity. The continuing evolution and adoption of PET, followed by the establishing field of collaborative computing are leading the way to a redefined global economy where opportunities are both unleashed and balanced by the characteristics of secure, private, and available data systems with its linchpin being a comprehensive security approach.
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