selecting-privacy-enhancing-technologies
Selecting Privacy-Enhancing Technologies
Overview
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are technical measures that protect personal data during collection, processing, storage, and sharing. The GDPR does not prescribe specific technologies but requires "appropriate technical measures" (Article 25(1), Article 32(1)) to implement data protection principles. The European Commission's February 2025 communication on PETs and the ENISA 2023 report on engineering privacy by design with PETs provide regulatory context for PET adoption.
Selecting the right PET depends on the processing scenario, data sensitivity, computational requirements, and the specific privacy property needed (confidentiality, anonymity, unlinkability, or transparency).
PET Taxonomy
1. Differential Privacy (DP)
Privacy property: Statistical indistinguishability — the output of an analysis is approximately the same whether or not any individual's data is included.
| Characteristic | Detail |
|---|---|
| Approach | Add calibrated noise to query results or model gradients |
| Privacy guarantee | Mathematically provable (epsilon, delta) bounds |
| Data utility | Configurable via epsilon; lower epsilon = more privacy, less utility |