Penn State out to save databases

Penn State University researchers are touting new technology designed to enable databases to talk without giving away secrets to each other.

The university’s Privacy-preserving Access Control Toolkit (PACT) relies on encryption of queries and data transmitted to protect sensitive information, including metadata.

PACT is discussed in a paper called “Privacy-preserving Semantic Interoperation and Access Control of Heterogeneous Databases,” which was presented at the recent ACM Symposium on Information, Communication and Computer Security in Taiwan.

Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, says PACT could provide organizations that need to share data an easier and less expensive way to do this. Currently, such information exchange involves development of special-purpose applications to get around the fact that different databases use different languages and vocabularies.

Future research revolving around PACT will address speeding up query processing and making interoperability between data sources smoother, Mitra says.

Bob Brown, bbrown@nww.com