The importance of Standards when it comes to disruptive technologies.
Updated: Dec 6, 2023
Standards bridge innovation and implementation, providing a common ground for diverse technologies to converge.
As technology advances from academia to industry, a unified framework becomes essential to ease the adoption of new technologies. In the case of Differential Privacy (DP), it is particularly more necessary due to the complexity of the technology, which requires experts for implementation in the absence of standards.
Within the TERMINET Project, DPella explores how standardization, particularly within the open-source DP libraries, is the key to unlocking the full potential of Differential Privacy and ensuring its widespread adoption.
The open-source community drives technological advancements, fosters collaboration, and accelerates innovation. The first phase of the TERMINATE project involved an in-depth exploration of Differential Privacy open-source tools. This comprehensive study was not merely a research endeavour but a strategic move to identify the common threads that could form the basis of a standardized application of DP.
WebDP, born from the TERMINATE project, is more than just a proof of concept. It serves as validation of the importance of standardization in applying Differential Privacy. The project laid the foundation for a standardized approach, ensuring compatibility across a diverse array of Differential privacy solutions.
WebDP is an API that aims to standardize the usage of Differential Privacy by providing an interface with explicit data governance features and capabilities to do analytics with various Differential Privacy engines, whether licensed or open source. Not only does WebDP handle user roles such as data owners and data analysts, privacy budget and user abuse prevention methods, but it also allows data scientists without much knowledge of Differential Privacy to use state-of-the-art technology.
As of today, WebDP is successfully connected with one open-source tool. While integrating WebDP with other DP libraries or tools demands expertise in Differential Privacy, its potential is significant. WebDP is poised to expand its reach, connecting with existing tools and adapting to embrace forthcoming innovations.