SBIR Phase I:Privacy and Risk Mitigation Assessment Tool (PARMAT)

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project investigates and develops techniques to determine the privacy risk to databases and data sets. The research results in the implementation of a suite of techniques, Privacy and Risk Mitigation Assessment Tool (PARMAT), to quantitatively assess data privacy and to mitigate risk. A prototype implementation is developed to test and demonstrate the feasibility of the techniques and methods. Privacy is a growing concern especially with the proliferation of personal information in electronic format, making it easier to access and gather individual-specific information. The tools and techniques developed during Phase I will be of interest to a wide variety of users that must protect the privacy of personal information stored electronically. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provides a set of standards for protecting the privacy of Americans' personal health records. The new regulation requires the protection of personal health information maintained by health care providers, hospitals, health plans, health insurers, and health care clearinghouses. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates the cost to industry associated with the privacy regulation implementation for HIPAA to be $17.6 billion. While the company only addresses one segment of healthcare information privacy, the market potential for the proffered technology is considerable.