In this article, Enveil CEO Ellison Anne Williams highlights how PETs are an operational efficiency enabler
In our digital-first world, data is a foundational asset that can deliver insights and shape outcomes. Data comes in all shapes and sizes — from internal assets to open source information to third-party holdings. Whether you’re a commercial or public sector entity, utilizing this data across boundaries and silos is a significant challenge. Yet to successfully navigate our global, data-driven ecosystem, organizations must be able to securely and efficiently unlock value from a wide-range of data sources.
There are numerous reasons for the existence of data usage barriers. Silos can be internal or external, driven by regulatory requirements, competitive advantage, classification, or need-to-know boundaries. Each scenario requires that risks be recognized, respected, and effectively mitigated. No matter how important the potential outcome, it is critical that business and mission leaders never compromise organizational interests for the sake of data value extraction.
Efforts to mitigate these risks and avoid exposure can be costly. Public sector organizations often replicate data into higher-trust systems for processing, resulting in substantially increased costs and delays in value extraction. Commercial organizations may duplicate expensive infrastructure stacks across operating jurisdictions to respect data localization requirements. And, organizations of all types frequently choose not to leverage all available data assets due to elevated risk, resulting in lost opportunity costs.
As the amount of available data continues to increase exponentially, and hyperlocalization becomes the norm, this status quo is unsustainable. Operating securely and efficiently at speed and scale requires a new paradigm.
A Technology-Enabled Solution
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are uniquely suited to answer the call. A family of technologies that enable, enhance, and preserve the privacy and security of data throughout its lifecycle, PETs allow users to securely and efficiently use data where it is and as it is across boundaries and silos.
These capabilities are proven to deliver operational efficiencies by:
Substantially Reducing Costs: By enabling secure and efficient data usage at scale, PETs allow datasets to be used in-place across silos and security boundaries, including multi-jurisdiction, multi-domain, and third-party environments. This eliminates the need to replicate data into higher-trust environments for processing or duplicate infrastructure stacks, creating workflow efficiencies that deliver immediate cost-savings via reduced resources for data ingest, compute, and storage.
Delivering Unprecedented Speed to Insights: With PETs, users can extract insights from data where it is and as it is without compromising the security or ownership of the underlying data or exposing sensitive interests or intent, accelerating the timeline for turning data — no matter the source — into actionable insights. By securely exploiting broader, richer data sources, including commercial and third-party data assets, organizations eliminate data gaps and gain expanded global insights.
Real-World Impact, Today
The ability of PETs to meaningfully deliver secure and efficient data usage is not theoretical; these solutions have been validated and utilized by global organizations. PETs-powered capabilities are delivering near-term operational efficiencies at scale today. Analysts and operators are performing encrypted searches, watchlisting, and machine learning that include sensitive indicators across internal silos and in third-party data environments without compromising business/mission interests.
By encrypting sensitive searches, watchlists, and ML models that run over cross-silo data, Enveil’s COTS software utilizes PETs to eliminate the need to move or replicate large datasets or infrastructure in order to extract value. This encrypted data usage enables unprecedented secure cross-boundary data collaboration, allowing organizations to utilize disparate datasets in a manner that is secure, efficient, and provides operationally-relevant insights. Enveil’s capabilities are deployed today, streamlining data usage by reducing duplication of effort, data, and infrastructure while expanding the full array of sources available to decision makers.
Future State
Frequently recognized for its ability to enable data privacy and security during use, the Privacy Enhancing Technologies category is ready to add another badge of recognition: efficiency enabler. We are only just beginning to see the impact PETs can have in delivering operational efficiency to data workflows. Using these powerful, innovative technologies, data-hungry organizations can unlock value across silos and boundaries at speed and at scale, transforming the status quo.
The era of PETs is upon us — it’s time to pay attention or risk being left behind.
Enveil is a pioneering Privacy Enhancing Technology company protecting Data in Use. Enveil’s business-enabling and privacy-preserving capabilities change the paradigm of how and where organizations can leverage data to unlock value. Defining the transformative category of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), Enveil’s award-winning ZeroReveal® solutions for secure data usage, collaboration, monetization, and Secure AI protect the content of the search, analytic, or model while it's being used or processed. Customers can extract insights, cross-match, search, analyze, and leverage AI across boundaries and silos at scale without exposing their interests and intent or compromising the security or ownership of the underlying data. A World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and Gartner Cool Vendor, Enveil is deployed and operational today, revolutionizing data usage in the global marketplace.
