Privacy enhancing technologies are a means to protect individual privacy and personal data

DR. SANJAY KUMAR DAS
ADDITIONAL SECRETARY (S&T AND BIOTECHNOLOGY) WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF WEST BENGAL

“Secure Multi Party Computation (SMPC) is one of the privacy enhancing technologies (PET). So why does PET matter? So we understand that the basic features extracted out of the data from the data sets are being computed. And these computations are being done in a competent, collective and a collaborative format in a completely neutral location. So this secure multi party computation is actually leading us specifically to a point where we are looking at zero knowledge proof and homomorphic encryption. We are today looking at computing on encrypted data. The GAFAM members namely Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft were hit hard by GDPR, and they collectively paid hundreds of billions of dollars over the years as a privacy driven non-compliance penalty. Then they realized that even if they want everyone to come to a SAS model or a subscription-based model, they cannot use one's data without their consent. Most of us are paying Google today for our mail storage space. But even if we are paying Google,

As a CISO, you should understand the core PET concept, because ultimately, you cannot be a data zero organization but have to be a data minimized organization. So when you allow somebody to fill up a form, remember to take only those data that you require, then give back the data which you don't require. Next, PET actually tells us to create noise around the data, so that somebody who is creeping into the data sometimes falters to identify the sensitive data lying before. So Secure Multi Party Computation actually makes Faceoff a beautiful product that it is today and is a good ambassador of PET.

Ultimately, even if you have all the data and information, you may not possess all the knowledge. Because information percolates laterally, while knowledge is generated vertically. So you have all the data, but you don't have the connectors, and so you don't have the knowledge.”