[LINK] Freeing Cloud Databases from Privacy Constraints

[Tom Worthington]

Professor Chris Clifton, Purdue University, will speak on "Freeing Cloud 
Databases from Privacy Constraints" at the Australian National 
University, in Canberra, 4pm 28 November 2011: 
http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/more/SID/2967


     Freeing Cloud Databases from Privacy Constraints
     Assoc Prof Chris Clifton (Purdue University )
     COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR

     DATE: 2011-11-28
     TIME: 16:00:00 - 17:00:00
     LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101
     CONTACT: peter.christen at anu.edu.au

     ABSTRACT:
     Privacy regulations can constrain how data is managed, particularly 
trans-border sharing and storage of data. This has significant 
implications for the use of cloud databases to manage private data. 
While management of encrypted data has received some research attention, 
this limits the services that can be provided by a cloud database. We 
propose to instead encrypt only the link between identifying data and 
sensitive information, thus eliminating the "individually identifiable" 
aspect of data that triggers most privacy regulations. This frees the 
cloud database to provide value-added services such as data cleansing 
and data analysis without constraint of privacy regulations.

     This talk will discuss our early results in this area, including 
schema development (how do we ensure that sensitive information cannot 
be identified?) and query processing (how do we handle the fact that 
part of the data needed to process the query is encrypted, and only the 
client has the key?) In addition to our existing results, we will 
discuss ongoing work, including the challenges posed by database systems 
designed specifically for cloud computing.
     BIO:
     Dr. Clifton works on data privacy, particularly with respect to 
analysis of private data. This includes privacy-preserving data mining, 
data de-identification and anonymization, and limits on identifying 
individuals from data mining models. He also works more broadly in data 
mining, including data mining of text and data mining techniques applied 
to interoperation of heterogeneous information sources. Fundamental data 
mining challenges posed by these applications include extracting 
knowledge from noisy data, identifying knowledge in highly skewed data 
(few examples of "interesting" behavior), and limits on learning. He 
also works on database support for widely distributed and autonomously 
controlled information, particularly issues related to data privacy.

     Prior to joining Purdue in 2001, Dr. Clifton was a principal 
scientist in the Information Technology Division at the MITRE 
Corporation. Before joining MITRE in 1995, he was an assistant professor 
of computer science at Northwestern University. He has a Ph.D. (1991) 
and M.A. (1988) from Princeton University, and Bachelor's and Master's 
degrees (1986) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
     URL: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/people/faculty/clifton/


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards 
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/