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$3.9M Grant to Yale Computer Science
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Business New Haven
12/08/2003
By: BNH
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NEW HAVEN - The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded investigators in the Computer Science Department at Yale $3.9 million to study the problems of preserving privacy of sensitive information while permitting large-scale data searching and management. Yale investigators will develop technical, legal and social approaches to the challenge of protecting individual privacy while maintaining access to important information. Identity theft, security and anonymity of medical health records, and telemarketing "do-not-call" lists are among the issues a new study at Yale will tackle.
"Sensitive data can be protected by encryption while it is in transmission from source to destination," explained Joan Feigenbaum, professor of computer science at Yale and investigator on the study. "This project addresses what happens after data reaches its destination and has to be decrypted for use."
Easy access to information can be an advantage: One can shop, bank and set up a date from a home computer. It is also a potential hazard: credit cards, Social Security numbers and personal information may be available to fraudulent businesses. The Yale research will investigate the relationship between how the technology works and how it is used. The project looks at legal and social issues and the role they play in technology development and implementation.
"Some but not all areas of data management have legal regulation in place," Feigenbaum said. "One example of an area in which there are regulations is the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), covering personal health-related data. It is interesting from the point of view of this project, because there is still a need for improved integration of privacy protection mechanisms with database management systems."
Other Yale investigators are computer science professors Avi Silverschatz and Ravindran Kannan.
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