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Home » Blogs » Data Protection at the Highest Level – Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) with Exasol

Data Protection at the Highest Level – Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) with Exasol

· 4 mins read

Initial situation

In the age of data-driven decisions, not only are the requirements for data availability and analysis speed increasing, but also for data protection and information security. Companies that work with highly sensitive data in particular – such as those from the healthcare sector or competition analysis – are faced with the challenge of not allowing any conclusions to be drawn from granular data about individuals or individual companies, despite filtered analyses.

iRIX has developed a powerful Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) solution based on Exasol’s pre-processor, which protects sensitive data through rule-based filtering before it is even extracted and displayed.

Challenge

Our client – an international company – regularly analyses highly sensitive market data, such as market shares of players within certain geographical or thematic segments. The key challenge here is that in highly segmented analyses – especially when only a few market participants are active – there is a risk that targeted queries can be used to draw conclusions about individual competitors.

This contradicts the principles of data anonymization and has the potential to reveal confidential company information. It was therefore necessary to develop mechanisms to ensure that defined protection rules are strictly adhered to before any data is used.

Requirements

The solution should fulfil the following requirements:

  • Data protection at database level, even before it is displayed in analysis tools such as Power BI, Tableau, SAP Analytics Cloud or IBM Cognos Analytics
  • Enforcement of specific business rules for anonymization, regardless of the BI front end used
  • Flexibility and performance even with large amounts of data
  • No manual pre-processing of data required – the rule check should take place automatically at runtime.

Solution: SDC-Library

A customized SDC library was developed on the basis of the Exasol Pre-Processors, which automatically checks all queries from BI tools for compliance with two data protection rules:

Rule 1: Each analysis must contain data from at least three independent market participants.

Rule 2: The two largest market participants may not account for more than 80 % of the total share within an evaluation.

If one of these rules is violated by a query, the system does not return any data – regardless of who issues the query or which front end is used.

This automatic check takes place entirely at database level, without additional processing for the BI tool or manual intermediate steps. This means that data protection remains seamlessly integrated into the analysis process.

Visualizing preprocessor with SDC and Exasol.

Result and outlook

The solution was developed and successfully tested for use in a highly sensitive data environment. It enables the secure, compliant analysis of large volumes of data and at the same time demonstrates Exasol’s innovative power and technological strength in the area of data protection-compliant business intelligence.

The SDC approach offers enormous potential for all organisations that work with confidential or competitively sensitive data and do not want to make do with other approaches such as data enrichment or micro-aggregations. The solution approach can be easily transferred to similar use cases.

Typical areas of use include:

Conclusion

Data security and analytical freedom need not be a contradiction in terms – on the contrary: with the right technological foundation, data protection requirements and flexible data analysis can be effectively combined. In our challenging customer project, we developed a powerful solution based on the SDC (Statistical Disclosure Control) approach that guarantees the secure handling of highly sensitive data – without restricting analytical possibilities.

The implementation impressively demonstrates how companies can make well-founded data-based decisions even in regulated or highly competitive environments without taking risks in terms of data protection or confidentiality.

Find out more about our SDC solution in this short video:

Talk to the iRIX expert about your BI project with data protection requirements.

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