Sheldon Anthony IO

Differential privacy is one of the new technologies that can enable organizations in highly regulated industries to tap into their most sensitive data safely together with other privacy-enhancing technologies. Businesses who are adopting differential privacy systems early will generate cumulative benefits over time and will have a competitive edge over their competition. Gartner predicts that through 2023, organizations that can instill digital trust will be able to participate in 50% more ecosystems, expanding revenue-generation opportunities.^[1] Spending is higher among customers who trust more.

As machine learning becomes more powerful, large-scale data analysis has various benefits, including enhancing public health research, reducing traffic, and identifying systemic barriers to lending. Consequently, big data involves aggregating large amounts of potentially sensitive personal information. By collecting medical records, scraping social media profiles, or tracking credit card and banking transactions, data scientists may jeopardize the privacy of individuals. Data can be stolen, shared, or compromised once it is stored on a server.

Uber's computer network was breached on 15 September 2022, and several engineering and communications systems were taken offline while the company investigated the attack. The perpetrator already sent emails, cloud storage, and code repositories to security firms and The New York Times as part of a "total compromise". This is just one recent, total compromise of a large organization that has been identified and publicized.^[2] 

A differential privacy system will prevent bad actors from reverse engineering data elements and connecting them to individuals even if they gain access to data with potentially damaging individual information. In the event the source data is compromised, the risk of personal data being compromised is minimized. When sensitive data, curators who need to release statistics, and adversaries who want to recover the sensitive data are present then it is a good time for your organization to implement a differential privacy system so that reverse-engineering of sensitive personal information is not possible. There are some underlying issues with differential privacy such as individual-level analysis is not possible because searching for specific information about individuals is impossible. It does hinder certain industries, especially in the fraud space because it does not permit zooming in on individuals. Differential privacy systems can also seriously impact any analysis based on small datasets. The inaccuracy introduced can easily be ignored for large datasets but not so for small datasets.

Google deployed its world-class differential privacy anonymization technology in 2014.^[3] Today developers can utilize its use through the Google Play Console to receive new app metrics and benchmarks in a differentially private way. With this new feature, developers will have easy access to metrics about how well their apps engage users, including Daily Active Users and Revenue per Active User, without being able to identify individuals. In addition to collaborating with other organizations without compromising the privacy of your customers, differential privacy systems allow your organization to share its data with them as part of your collaboration.

Protecting your business data is crucial in today’s digital age. With differential privacy, you can ensure that your customers’ data is kept private while still being able to analyze their behavior. This means that you can comply with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA without compromising your ability to provide personalized experiences to your customers. By doing so, you can build better relationships with your customers and provide them with the privacy guarantees they deserve. Not only does differential privacy protect your customers’ data, but it also protects your business from potential data breaches and cyber-attacks. By implementing differential privacy, you can rest assured that your business data is secure and that you’re doing everything you can to protect your customers’ privacy. So don’t wait any longer - start implementing differential privacy today and protect your business data! Your customers will thank you for it.