Solutions to catalysing PETs adoption at Privacy-Enhancing Technology Summit Asia-Pacific

Nov 15, 2022
I had a great time discussing privacy-enhancing technologies' (PETs) topics with global experts in the roundtable discussions at Privacy-Enhancing Technology Summit Asia-Pacific today. 😊 One of the major concerns was the adoption of PETs, and I have succinctly jotted down the gripping solutions brought to the table
  • Government support and training are paramount in the adoption of PETs. Especially challenging is their early adoption.
  • Standardisation in the use of PETs is crucial. A step in this direction could be to have the vendors worldwide set standards on the use of PETs, which can be promulgated at the policy level. Once the standards and guidelines are published, there will be better awareness, acceptance and clarity of PETs.
  • Trust in PETs is another essential aspect. Can there be backdoors to a technology? Being transparent about a technology is one way to address it, for instance, by open-sourcing it.
  • Another dimension is the utility provided by PETs while offering reasonable privacy risk mitigation (to what extent can PETs convert "personal" data into "non-personal" data).
  • Internal and external stakeholders will tie PETs usage to the business value. However, the value offered by PETs should also be assessed at scale. For instance, a solution that is for a short duration can have business concerns.
  • An enterprise can incentivise users to adopt PETs (one of the leads shared that their company ties performance bonuses to handling the simulated phishing attacks :D ).
  • Lastly, evangelising the impact of PETs can be rewarding (for example, Apple leveraging privacy as a competitive edge).
    • Can PETs also address the concern related to privacy breaches: what data subjects got breached? And to what extent? What was the reason for the breach? 🤔