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Data Disclosure Research

As health care providers, financial institutions and others move toward collecting and storing increasingly vast amounts of individuals' personal information, the issue of data security is a growing concern. Misuse of personal data has cost millions of dollars in identity fraud and countless hours of frustration in attempts to repair credit records and recover lost funds. IBM is helping its clients to safeguard personal data through its work in data security and disclosure methods.

As manager of data disclosure research at IBM's Almaden Research Lab, Tyrone Grandison is working in partnership with IBM Global Business Services (GBS), contributing his expertise in data management to solving the problem of securing digital data. "My current focus is on conducting fundamental science for new frameworks, models and methodologies, with an eye toward opportunities for specific application domains with respect to data management," says Tyrone. "I am currently exploring security- and privacy-aware disclosure, RFID data management, Entity Analytics and data processing for massively distributed data networks."

IBM initiatives, such as the Hippocratic database technology, are leading the way toward secure solutions for health care providers and others entrusted with individuals' personal data. The Hippocratic database technology set includes active enforcement, a cell-level disclosure management system that helps limit data access to authorized persons. It also features compliance auditing designed to help facilitate determination of who accessed designated data, when and for what purpose. The flexible system can help simplify the installation and enforcement of a corporate privacy policy and allows dynamic policy updates. Additional data protection components such as sovereign information sharing, watermarking and privacy preserving data mining are also available as options.

Efforts like these address "the pressing need for data security and privacy technology that will provide data owners and data brokers with the confidence that policy is being carried out by technology," says Tyrone. "Currently, privacy concerns threaten to stunt the growth of many businesses. The work that is being done by my team allows companies to continue to focus on their core functionality, while addressing the issue of data disclosure and not impeding their production systems.

"The technology can apply to any industry or sector where there is a concern around protecting data. The initial targeted sectors for deployment are health care and finance, but the growth plan is to deploy it in other sectors as the demand increases. Our main goal," says Tyrone," is to help businesses flourish without worrying about privacy concerns."