Anonymise with ease, private with certainty
EAsyAnon – Recommendation and verification system for anonymizing data
Motivation
The earmarked exchange of digital data is an unsolved problem for organisations and companies. In public authorities, research institutions and companies, more and more data is created with a wealth of knowledge that cannot currently be exploited. To publish this data as open data even in research-related contexts is impossible.
The reason: the legal situation and more general a lack of technical solutions. In most cases, data sets are withheld from the public due to the challenges of data protection, privacy and security issues. The rights of individuals could be violated. Therefore, no social added value can be achieved.
This situation motivated the development of EAsyAnon. The project team is developing a holistic solution by using sensitive health data from the healthcare system as an exemplary field of application. The aim of EAsyAnon is to anonymise data as open data in every data-intensive domain.
Funding provider
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)
Duration
3 Jahre Laufzeit (15.12.2022 – 14.12.2025)
Coordination
Gesamtprojektleitung: Prof. Dr. Florian Wahl (THD)
Projektkoordination: Sebastian Wilhelm (THD)
Project consortium
Technische Hochschule Deggendorf / Universität Augsburg / Smart In Media AG / Passion4IT GmbH / IT-Sicherheitscluster e. V.
Project goals
Secure exchange and publication of data as open data
Open data is one building block for a knowledge-driven society. It allows improvements in knowledge culture, orientated towards the common welfare. Its benefits lie in a wide spread utilisation in many fields of application of such data. Making it available is currently a major hurdle. One of the aims of EAsyAnon is to overcome this. A three-part software based system is being developed, consisting of an intelligent recommendation system, an audit system that determines the degree to which data can be de-anonymised and a trust service.
Our key innovations
Confidentiality
\ Confidential communication channels
\ Confidential storage
\ Confidential switching
\ Confidential by design
Legal certainty
\ Developed with legal certainty
\ Legally secure controlled
\ Legally secure through technology
\ Legally secure through expertise
Connectivity
\ Adaptable across domain boundaries
\ Adaptable for systems
\ Adaptable in infrastructures
\ Adaptable with the latest technologies
Module
Recommendation system
Usability and legal certainty: The recommendation system is intended to support data owners in creating a suitable anonymisation concept for a specific data set. Particular attention is paid to ensuring both legal conformity and maximum data usability. EAsyAnon initially considers use cases with CSV and DICOM data.
Module
Audit system
Man and machine: The two-part audit system checks the degree of anonymity of the data records in a two-stage process. First, potentially de-anonymisable parts of the data records are identified using automated methods. This is followed by an assessment of the de-anonymisability of the respective data by experts from various scientific disciplines as part of a crowd-sourced peer reviewing process.
Module
Trust Service
Confidentiality and data protection: The Trust Service will extend the publication options for datasets that have to be published with a delay for reasons of time limitation or anonymisation barriers. The aim of the research targets data that will be able to be published. The analysis of data takes care of pseudonymisation processes in legal accordance with EU data protection regulations.
