Sharing Big Data Safely

Preface

This is not a book to tell you how to build a security system. It’s not about how to lock data down. Instead, we provide solutions for how to share secure data safely.

The benefit of collecting large amounts of many different types of data is now widely understood, and it’s increasingly important to keep certain types of data locked down securely in order to protect it against intrusion, leaks, or unauthorized eyes. Big data security techniques are becoming very sophisticated. But how do you keep data secure and yet get access to it when needed, both for people within your organization and for outside experts? The challenge of balancing security with safe sharing of data is the topic of this book.

These suggestions for safely sharing data fall into two groups:

• How to share original data in a controlled way such that each different group using it—such as within your organization—only sees part of the whole dataset.
• How to employ synthetic data to let you get help from outside experts without ever showing them original data.

The book explains in a non-technical way how specific techniques for safe data sharing work. The book also reports on real-world use cases in which customized synthetic data has provided an effective solution. You can read Chapters 1–4 and get a complete sense of the story.

In Chapters 5–7, we go on to provide a technical deep-dive into these techniques and use cases and include links to open source code and tips for implementation.

Who Should Use This Book

If you work with sensitive data, personally identifiable information (PII), data of great value to your company, or any data for which you’ve made promises about disclosure, or if you consult for people with secure data, this book should be of interest to you. The book is intended for a mixed non-technical and technical audience that includes decision makers, group leaders, developers, and data scientists.

Our starting assumption is that you know how to build a secure system and have already done so. The question is: do you know how to safely share data without losing that security?