Anonymisation, Deanonymisation and Data Management

Speaker: Dr Kieron O'Hara Organiser: Time: 04/02/2015 11:00-11:45 Location: B32/3077 Abstract In order to reap the potential societal benefits of big and broad data, it is essential to share and link personal data. However, privacy and data protection considerations mean that, to be shared, personal data must be anonymised, so that the data subject cannot be identified from the data. Anonymisation is therefore a vital tool for data sharing, but deanonymisation, or reidentification, is always possible given sufficient auxiliary information (and as the amount of data grows, both in terms of creation, and in terms of availability in the public domain, the probability of finding such auxiliary information grows). This creates issues for the management of anonymisation, which are exacerbated not only by uncertainties about the future, but also by misunderstandings about the process(es) of anonymisation. This talk discusses these issues in relation to privacy, risk management and security, reports on recent theoretical tools created by the UKAN network of statistics professionals (on which the author is one of the leads), and asks how long anonymisation can remain a useful tool, and what might replace it.