What are Privacy Enhancing Technologies? Why are They Important?
With the increasing dependency on digitalization in our daily lives, it is vital to protect personal data. Data privacy focuses on the issues related to collecting, storing, and retaining online information. PETs are a diverse set of hardware and software solutions embodying fundamental data protection principles. This method reduces personal data use and improves data security.
PET is the combination of various computer tools, applications, and mechanisms that, when integrated into online services, help users protect the privacy of their data. Here are examples of 6 different Privacy Enhancing Technologies to ensure better data protection and confidentiality maintenance for your business.
Vast amounts of data are being processed daily, and the volume is growing exponentially. Privacy Enhancing Technologies use techniques to minimize data and its utilization without losing functionality. PETs allow users to log, archive, and track data transfer times and dates.
PET helps to protect individuals’ privacy by allowing them to share only enough personal information. This process offers enormous potential benefits for users, organizations, and society through the accessibility and availability of high-quality data. Data protection is a challenge, and it is the responsibility of technology companies to secure user data. Following privacy-enhancing technologies will ensure data security and customer information security in any industrial field.
The importance of PETs are explained in detail below.
Importance of Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) is a system of ICT measures protecting informal privacy by eliminating or minimizing personal data. It helps prevent the unwanted processing of personal data without compromising the functionality of the information system.
PET allows the negotiation of the terms and conditions that ensure consumers and service providers maintain, refine and establish privacy policies as individualized agreements. PET also lets users track their personal data flow, including the already transferred data. It helps to understand when and to whom the data has been transferred and under what specific conditions.
Enterprises lacking a proper PET process offer an easy opportunity for malicious attackers to get hold of and misuse the data. This poses a massive threat to users’ privacy and hampers people’s reputation, credibility, trust, and confidence in the actions of organizations. Business organizations should therefore ensure they have complete control over managing customer data.
PET is widely used to make financial transactions safe. Financial institutions are responsible for protecting the privacy of the customers for protecting their customer privacy due to citizens’ freedom to conduct private deals and transactions.
The healthcare sector collects and shares Electronic Health Records (EHR) of patients. The clinical data can be used to find out the patient records. Healthcare organizations, therefore, utilize PETs to ensure the privacy of the patient’s data and clinical information.
Disclosure of personal information can compromise sensitive data. Malicious users often use this data to harm individuals. Data can be misrepresented or altered. It can also be published representing another person. PET ensures that such data interpretation does not affect the identity or interests of an individual, even if the information is used for various purposes.