Solving the problem of balancing data usefulness and protection of personal identifiable information using multiple anonymisation techniques

Growth of various technologies such as the internet, wireless computing and different storage devices, results in to collection and sharing of numerous individuals' data. This data may contain different kind of personal identifiable information (PII) that can be linked by other information to identify individuals' sensitive information such as diseases. This data often needs to be shared between different organizations for different purposes such as research and other public benefit purposes. Two very important aims of information sharing is the protection of PII and the provision of as much data as possible to appropriate users. These are two conflicting goals, as the more PII protection provided the less useful the data is to users. Therefore techniques need to be identified that can provide a balanced solution. In this paper the authors propose an algorithm that uses -diversity together with pseudonymisation technique to provide the balance and data can then be shared for different purposes such as hospital treatment, doing research and support for public benefit purposes.