Privacy Enhancing Technology
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Privacy Enhancing Technology: Need of the hour

The amount of data operated and processed on the internet continues to increase, so does the concern of its users about their data. Most people worry about the usage of their personal information by companies. Also, they fear the announcement to third parties. This is when Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) comes under the radar. In this blog, we have discussed PET in detail. 
 

What is Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET)?

 As the name suggests, Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) is a technology that offers the highest level of data security from hackers’ attacks. In other words, it allows different parties to extract actionable information/data from users without giving access to other parties.
 

Why do we need Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET)?

 As the business’s motive diverts towards ensuring customers that the data stored with them is safe, they need to have PET. It is evolving every day to enhance and enable data privacy. Below are some reasons stating why do a business needs to have a PET:
 
  • Prevention of harm:

It is necessary to protect users’ data to prevent access to it without permission, which otherwise can harm their privacy.

  • Unfair Conditions:

Users do not know about the usage of their data, all they do is agree to the terms and conditions. To ensure fair usage of users’ data, we need PEC.
  • Human Dignity Violation:

In the absence of privacy, everyone assumes that a person is the same as what he/she appears to be in the information, which need not be the case always. It leads to misjudgment and hence, violates human dignity.
 

How does Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) work?

As of now, it is pretty clear what PET is. Now, it’s time to get a detailed overview of its working. There are several modern technologies involved in protecting personal data, some of them are below: 
 
  • Homomorphic Encryption means that the processing data will be confidential. Homomorphic Encryption provides the ability to process the data, only to those who have personal keys to access different computations, without the need for indexing the private information
  • Multi-Party Computation is a technique that allows many people to operate on a single data without revealing their initial data.
  • Differential Privacy is a method of sharing a particular dataset online and describing the patterns of a group involved while maintaining the privacy of the individuals involved in the dataset.
 

Applications of Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET)

Every enterprise wants to keep its data private, so the application of PET is vast. Every economic sector uses it. Below, we have talked about the applications of PET in various industries:
 
  • Business:

As discussed above, every company or business needs to keep their customer’s data confidential otherwise, it can impact the company’s reputation. Thus, it is necessary to place PET in a business.
  • Finances:

Since this sector deals with money, it requires a great sense of security. Banks and other financial institutions have to take utmost care in protecting the data from hackers’ attacks. They need to assure that customers’ sensitive data such as account numbers or credit card details are not announced to third parties.
  • Healthcare:

Since the healthcare industry has moved to digitalization to keep an accurate record of its patients’ health, it is necessary to assure safety while sending over the data for research purposes.
 

Conclusion

With everything installed on the web at a large scale, users worry about their data getting stolen or shared without their knowledge. A large part of internet users wants to remain anonymous. Thanks to Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) that has increased the security border.

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