Privacy in ontology-based information systems: A pending matter

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Cuenca Grau, Bernardo

Affiliations: Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Oxford, United Kingdom. E-mail: berg@comlab.ox.ac.uk

Note: [] The author is supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.

Abstract: OWL ontologies are extensively used in the clinical sciences, with ontologies such as SNOMED CT being a component of the health information systems of several countries. Preserving privacy of information in ontology-based systems (e.g., preventing unauthorised access to system's data and ontological knowledge) is a critical requirement, especially when the system is accessed by numerous users with different privileges and is distributed across applications. Unauthorised disclosure, for example, of medical information from SNOMED-based systems could be disastrous for government organisations, companies and, most importantly, for the patients themselves. It is to be expected that privacy-related issues will become increasingly important as ontology-based technologies are integrated in mainstream applications. In this short paper, I discuss several challenges and open problems, and sketch possible research directions.

Keywords: Ontologies, semantic web, data privacy

DOI: 10.3233/SW-2010-0009

Journal: Semantic Web, vol. 1, no. 1-2, pp. 137-141, 2010