IBM at Work on Hippocratic Database

The architecture for the Hippocratic database concept is to be based on 10 guiding principles: purpose specification, consent, limited collection, limited use, limited disclosure, limited retention, accuracy, openness and compliance.

The Hippocratic database and its components would work in the following way, according to IBM officials. First, metadata tables would be defined for each type of information collected. A Privacy Metadata Creator would generate the tables to determine who should have access to what data and how long that data should be stored. A Privacy Constraint Validator would check whether a sites privacy policies match a users preferences, and once this is verified the data would be transmitted from the user to the database.

A Data Accuracy Analyzer would test the accuracy of the data being shared. Once queries are submitted along with their intended purpose, the Attribute Access Control would verify whether the query is accessing only those fields necessary for the querys purpose. Only records that match the queries purpose would be visible thanks to the Record Access Control component. The Query Intrusion Detector then would run compliance tests on the results to detect any queries whose access pattern varies from the normal access pattern.

In the final step, a Data Retention Manager would delete any items stored beyond the length of their intended purpose. Audit trails of queries also would be kept to allow for privacy audits and to guard the database from suspicion that it has been misused.

While IBM researchers are interested in eventually including the Hippocratic database concept into IBMs DB2 database, they also want to expand interest in the concept. Agrawal hopes the presentation of the concept will lead other vendors and university researchers to embrace and evolve it.

"I wanted the database community to become cognizant of the issues," Agrawal said. "I personally think it will help if others participate in it."