BD Spokes: PLANNING: NORTHEAST: Collaborative: Planning for Privacy and Security in Big Data

Security and privacy play a key role in areas such as health, energy, and smart cities, as well as constituting a grand challenge in and of themselves. Privacy and security are critical for realizing Big Data's promise to advance society. If data are used without regard to privacy of individuals or protection of the data, then individuals may be hurt. If the data?s authenticity is not guaranteed, or if data are not permitted to be used at all due to privacy and security concerns, then the data's value is not realized. As the information that is collected about us grows in quantity, scientific and commercial value, and sensitivity, addressing these challenges is crucial to accessing the benefits of big data while ensuring that privacy and associated basic rights such as free speech and association are respected. Through two workshops hosted by DIMACS, this planning project will advance the research agenda on privacy and security for big data, build a community of interested researchers and practitioners, and propose regional activities in security and privacy related to the Northeast Big Data Hub. The long-term vision of the project is to catalyze both foundational and practical advances in privacy and security for big data that have the ability to positively impact society by (1) expanding the extent to which individuals can have control over protection of their personal data, and (2) enabling data?s value to be harnessed for advances in areas including health, energy, smart cities and regions, finance, and education.

The first event, a workshop on 'Overcoming Barriers to Data Sharing including Privacy and Fairness', will bring together computer scientists, legal scholars, social scientists, and consumers of data to understand the extent to which privacy currently limits the sharing of data, including but not limited to research data, and to develop standards and best practices to enable new information flows in domains from healthcare to energy. The second event, the 'NE BD Hub Workshop on Privacy and Security for Big Data', will bring together privacy and security experts as well as experts in a variety of big data application areas to highlight privacy and security issues associated with each of the Northeast Big Data hub spokes. Expected project outcomes include broad participation, development of new collaborations and partnerships, production and dissemination of tutorial and talk videos, and reports on planned activities and potential best practices.

This award is co-funded by the CISE Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) Program.