IBM forays into privacy automation

SAN FRANCISCO: IBM has announced its decision to unveil new tools to help corporations make sure their confidential information is only seen by authorized employees.

With the advent of federal rules requiring banks, hospitals and other companies to protect customer privacy, IBM responded with Tivoli Privacy Manager, software to help organizations automate the enforcement of privacy practices as opposed to doing that manually or not at all.

Now, IBM is offering a new programming language that can be used to translate natural language privacy policies -- such as which employees can share specific information -- into machine-readable descriptions that applications can understand.

IBM also unveiled Reference Monitor and Declarative Privacy Monitoring programs that enable companies to build links between their privacy management software and databases, Web-based applications and other programs where sensitive information is stored.

'These will help enterprises and governments manage the privacy of the data they collect,' said Arvind Krishna, vice president of security products at IBM's Tivoli Software unit. 'There is nothing in terms of technology to help them do that today.'

For example, the new software can be used by a medical center to ensure that only the primary care physician can view a patient's information and only for diagnosis and treatment purposes, he said.

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