To Manage Privacy Risks, Make Your Information Anonymous

by Khaled El Emam

Businesses and governments collect a large amount of personal information, some of it quite sensitive, about their clients, employees, patients, and citizens. At the same time, a random scan of media reports on any given day will find multiple stories of personal data lost by or stolen from corporations and governments. For instance, between January 2007 and August 2009, there were at least 1,306 reported breaches of personal information affecting almost 176 million records in the US and Canada.