The United Kingdom’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology and the Information Commissioner’s Office published a comprehensive guide on the costs and benefits of adopting Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) to help organizations understand and evaluate the adoption of PETs in their business environment.
The toolkit is structured around three main sections.
The first focuses on federated learning, examining the costs and benefits of implementing this approach compared to traditional centralized data processing. This section provides a thorough analysis of the technical, operational, and legal considerations organizations must weigh when deciding whether to adopt federated learning solutions.
The second section delves into input privacy, exploring technologies that protect data during the processing stage. It provides detailed explanations of key technologies, including homomorphic encryption, trusted execution environments, and secure multiparty computation. Each technology is examined in terms of its implementation requirements, benefits, and potential drawbacks.
The third section addresses output privacy, focusing on methods to protect data after it has been processed. This section primarily explores two main approaches: differential privacy and synthetic data generation. It provides a comprehensive analysis of how these technologies work, their implementation considerations, and their legal implications.
Throughout the document, several key themes emerge. These include the inherent trade-offs between privacy and utility, the technical complexity and computational costs associated with implementing PETs, legal compliance considerations, and the balance between long-term benefits and short-term implementation costs. The guide emphasizes that while PETs offer powerful privacy-preserving capabilities, they aren’t a universal solution to all privacy concerns. Instead, organizations should carefully evaluate their specific needs, resources, and use cases to determine whether and how to implement these technologies effectively.
If your organization is weighing the costs and benefits of adopting PETs, check out this toolkit for a comprehensive resource on the topic!