Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs)
Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are tools and methods that protect personal data by reducing exposure, enabling secure computation, and supporting regulatory compliance.
What are privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs)?
Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are technical solutions designed to safeguard personal information throughout its lifecycle. They help organizations minimize, anonymize, or encrypt data to preserve privacy without compromising utility.
Examples include differential privacy, federated learning, and homomorphic encryption, which allow data analysis while keeping identifiable information protected.
PETs support compliance with privacy frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), CCPA, and Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA).
Why privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) matter
PETs enable organizations to balance innovation and privacy by embedding protection into data processing. They reduce the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches, and misuse while allowing compliant analytics and AI development.
As privacy regulations evolve, PETs have become essential for demonstrating accountability, supporting cross-border data collaboration, and ensuring ethical use of personal data.
For regulators and organizations alike, PETs represent a practical step toward achieving privacy-by-design principles at scale.
How privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are used in practice
- Applying anonymization and pseudonymization to sensitive datasets
- Using federated learning to train AI models without centralizing personal data
- Performing computations on encrypted data through homomorphic encryption
- Applying differential privacy to obscure individual-level data in aggregate reports
- Enabling secure data collaboration between organizations while maintaining confidentiality
- Integrating PETs into data governance and AI governance frameworks
Related laws & standards
- EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) – India
- ISO/IEC 27559 (Privacy Enhancing Data De-Identification Framework)
- NIST Privacy Framework
How OneTrust helps with privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs)
OneTrust supports the adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies by helping organizations operationalize anonymization, encryption, and data minimization. The platform enables responsible data use while maintaining compliance with global privacy laws.
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FAQs about privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs)
PETs include anonymization, pseudonymization, encryption, differential privacy, and federated learning—each reducing data exposure and strengthening privacy compliance.
Anonymization removes all identifiers so individuals cannot be re-identified, while pseudonymization replaces identifiers with reversible tokens under controlled conditions.
