Professional workforce development
Privacy-enhancing technologies, or PETs, promise the ability to control the sharing and use of sensitive information while minimizing the risk of unauthorized use. Examples of PETs include communication anonymizers that remove personally identifiable information from text, synthetic data generators that create realistic data for use in test environments, and data encryption that converts data to an unintelligible form for data storage or transit. These technologies have been under development for many years but have been slow to be deployed into operational use.
In June 2022, CAOE hosted a workshop in collaboration with the DHS Privacy Office to bring DHS stakeholders together with the academic community to review real-life case studies. These case studies included needs related to protecting private data, such as social security numbers, and enhancing the cybersecurity of biometrics data. CAOE and the DHS Privacy Office held this workshop to increase the collaboration between DHS and leading researchers for developing new solutions to effectively use PETs while mitigating risks.
During the day-long workshop, 12 academic white papers were presented showcasing technology that could be used to address use cases for privacy-preserving data analysis that was previously collected from DHS component agencies. The workshop’s goal was to find new approaches to solve present challenges within the next three to five years.
In a follow-up to the workshop, DHS Chief Privacy Officer Lynn Parker Dupree stated, “I will be encouraging the participants in the workshop to share these case studies with their networks to continue the collaborative process between the researchers and DHS participants.”
The case studies and white papers are now available to the public at https://caoe.asu.edu/pets4hse
Follow-up workshops and collaborations are being planned and you are encouraged to reach out to CAOE for more information to contribute to these ongoing efforts.
