ACE: A Consent-Embedded privacy-preserving search on genomic database.

Area of Science:

• Cryptography
• Data Security
• Genomic Databases

Background:

• Managing user consent and data deletion in large databases presents significant privacy challenges.
• Existing encryption schemes often lack dynamic consent management and real-time data deletion capabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce ACE, a novel consent-embedded searchable encryption scheme.
• To enable dynamic consent management with instant, physical data deletion upon revocation.
• To ensure compliance with privacy regulations and protect individual data rights.

Main Methods:

• Developed a consent-embedded searchable encryption scheme (ACE).
• Implemented dynamic consent management supporting physical data deletion.
• Evaluated ACE in genomic databases for record addition and deletion by ID.
• Defined and proved security under non-adaptive attacks using forward and backward privacy definitions.
• Introduced and analyzed the hardness of a new problem, D-ACE, for security proofs.

Main Results:

• ACE supports dynamic consent management and instant physical data deletion.
• The scheme efficiently handles addition and deletion of genomic records by ID.
• ACE is formally proven secure against non-adaptive attacks.
• The hardness of D-ACE is established via reduction from DDH.

Conclusions:

• ACE provides a robust solution for privacy-preserving data management, especially in sensitive domains like genomics.
• The scheme effectively balances data utility with stringent privacy requirements and regulatory compliance.
• ACE demonstrates practical feasibility and performance for real-world applications.