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Software Allows Secure Data Sharing
Techtree News Staff, May 03, 2006 1732 hrs ISTAn ex-IITian along with a team of researchers from the Penn State University has developed a new software dubbed "PACT"...
An ex-IITian along with a team of researchers from the Penn State University has developed a new software dubbed "Privacy-preserving Access Control Toolkit (PACT)" that allows users to share databases, at the same time allowing them to maintain confidentiality of the data. The team says, the new software allows databases "to talk to each other automatically" without compromising on the security of the data and metadata.
The modus operandi is that the data communicated, queries and other information is encrypted. PACT acts like a filter but is resilient to eavesdropping or other attacks because of the encryption.
According to Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, and member of the research team, the software automatically regulates access to data, so some information can be exchanged while other data remains private and confidential. Often when security is implemented, access to data is invariably blocked. The new tool preserves security whilst allowing permitted access.
Also, many a times it becomes difficult to share data with government agencies and non-profit making organizations because databases are typically created using different terms and vocabularies. Mitra said that PACT is generic, and that it can be applied to a wide range of scenarios.
PACT was described in the paper, "Privacy-preserving Semantic Interoperation and Access Control of Heterogeneous Databases," presented at ACM's recently concluded Symposium on Information, Communication and Computer Security held at Taiwan. The authors included Mitra, a faculty member in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST); Chi-Chun Pan, a graduate student in Penn State's industrial and manufacturing engineering department; Peng Liu, assistant professor, Penn State's IST; and Vijay Atluri, associate professor, Rutgers University.
According to the research team, PACT is the first software to provide a framework that protects metadata, while enabling semantic interoperation or sharing of information. Mitra added that results from the researchers' experiments demonstrate that PACT can easily be extended to large database systems in practical applications.
The modus operandi is that the data communicated, queries and other information is encrypted. PACT acts like a filter but is resilient to eavesdropping or other attacks because of the encryption.
According to Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, and member of the research team, the software automatically regulates access to data, so some information can be exchanged while other data remains private and confidential. Often when security is implemented, access to data is invariably blocked. The new tool preserves security whilst allowing permitted access.
Also, many a times it becomes difficult to share data with government agencies and non-profit making organizations because databases are typically created using different terms and vocabularies. Mitra said that PACT is generic, and that it can be applied to a wide range of scenarios.
PACT was described in the paper, "Privacy-preserving Semantic Interoperation and Access Control of Heterogeneous Databases," presented at ACM's recently concluded Symposium on Information, Communication and Computer Security held at Taiwan. The authors included Mitra, a faculty member in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST); Chi-Chun Pan, a graduate student in Penn State's industrial and manufacturing engineering department; Peng Liu, assistant professor, Penn State's IST; and Vijay Atluri, associate professor, Rutgers University.
According to the research team, PACT is the first software to provide a framework that protects metadata, while enabling semantic interoperation or sharing of information. Mitra added that results from the researchers' experiments demonstrate that PACT can easily be extended to large database systems in practical applications.
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