Edge Hash Linking for Privacy-Preserving Entity Identification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing technologies face challenges in efficiently processing and managing personally identifying information while ensuring data privacy and reducing the processing burden on central servers.
Innovation Solution
Implementing edge processing nodes to handle identifying information through hashing and discarding plaintext, with central servers maintaining a network graph for linking hash values, allowing synchronized and secure data exchange across networks.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If identifying information is processed and stored in plaintext at central servers, then data can be easily accessed and linked, but data privacy is compromised and central servers become overloaded
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the processing architecture into edge processing nodes and central servers. Edge nodes perform local hashing and initial processing, while central servers maintain network graphs for linking. This segmentation reduces the processing burden on central servers and ensures data privacy by keeping identifying information decentralized.
Solution Approach 2:
Hash values serve as intermediaries between identifying information and network graph linkages. Instead of storing or transmitting plaintext identifying information, the system uses hash values as mediators to maintain privacy while enabling accurate linkage and identification across the network.
2Productivity
If identifying information is hashed and discarded at edge nodes, then data privacy is improved and central server load is reduced, but the ability to link and synchronize data across networks becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of transmitting the original identifying information, the system copies only the hash values to the network graph. This allows central servers to maintain linkage information without storing the actual identifying data, improving server capacity while enabling accurate data synchronization through the hash value copies.
3Ease of operation
If plaintext identifying information is stored and processed centrally, then data linkage and processing are simplified, but data security and user privacy are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter representation of identifying information from plaintext to hashed format. This parameter transformation maintains the ability to link and process data while eliminating the security risks associated with storing and processing plaintext sensitive information.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer-storage media, for enriching or exchanging identifying information using central and edge processing nodes. In some implementations, a method includes generating a hash value for each of one or more components of identifying information of a first entity; discarding the identifying information; storing the hash value for each of the one or more components of the identifying information and not the identifying information; generating a network graph linking the hash value for each of the one or more components of the identifying information with the first entity; providing the hash of the identifying information to a central server; and updating, using response data from the central server, the network graph to additionally link to a respective hash value for each component in a second set of components identifying the first entity.