CDPSE Technical Privacy Controls 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which anonymization technique replaces actual values with fictional but realistic-looking substitutes that maintain referential integrity?
- Data masking
- Tokenization (Correct answer)
- Pseudonymization
- Data synthesis
Correct answer: Tokenization
Tokenization replaces sensitive values with non-sensitive tokens that can be mapped back via a secure token vault, preserving referential integrity.
Question 2: A privacy engineer is implementing differential privacy. What is the primary mechanism used to protect individual records?
- Encrypting each record with a unique key
- Adding calibrated statistical noise to query results (Correct answer)
- Removing outlier records before analysis
- Aggregating records into cohorts of at least 100
Correct answer: Adding calibrated statistical noise to query results
Differential privacy adds mathematically calibrated noise to outputs so that the inclusion or exclusion of any single record has negligible impact on results.
Question 3: What does the 'epsilon' parameter (ε) control in a differential privacy implementation?
- The encryption key length
- The size of the anonymization dataset
- The privacy-utility trade-off (lower = stronger privacy) (Correct answer)
- The number of noise distributions applied
Correct answer: The privacy-utility trade-off (lower = stronger privacy)
Epsilon (ε) is the privacy budget; a smaller ε means more noise is added, providing stronger privacy at the cost of data utility.
Question 4: An organization needs to share patient datasets with researchers while preventing re-identification. Which de-identification standard is mandated under HIPAA?
- ISO 29101 anonymization framework
- Expert Determination or Safe Harbor method (Correct answer)
- NIST SP 800-188 de-identification standard
- GDPR pseudonymization guidelines
Correct answer: Expert Determination or Safe Harbor method
HIPAA provides two de-identification methods: Expert Determination (statistical verification) and Safe Harbor (removal of 18 specified identifiers).
Question 5: Which access control model is BEST suited for enforcing data minimization by granting access based on job function rather than individual identity?
- Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
- Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) (Correct answer)
- Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)
Correct answer: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
RBAC assigns permissions to roles tied to job functions, naturally limiting data access to what each role needs, supporting data minimization.
Question 6: A developer wants to allow analytics on encrypted data without decrypting it. Which cryptographic technique enables computation directly on ciphertext?
- Homomorphic encryption (Correct answer)
- Format-preserving encryption
- Envelope encryption
- Authenticated encryption
Correct answer: Homomorphic encryption
Homomorphic encryption allows mathematical operations to be performed on ciphertext, producing an encrypted result that, when decrypted, equals the result of the same operation on plaintext.
Question 7: What is the primary purpose of a Privacy-Enhancing Technology (PET) called 'secure multi-party computation' (SMPC)?
- Encrypting data at rest across multiple storage nodes
- Allowing multiple parties to jointly compute a function without revealing their private inputs (Correct answer)
- Distributing encryption keys across multiple key custodians
- Replicating privacy controls across federated cloud environments
Correct answer: Allowing multiple parties to jointly compute a function without revealing their private inputs
SMPC enables multiple parties to collaboratively compute results from their combined private data without any party exposing its raw inputs to others.
CDPSE Technical Privacy Controls 2
Which anonymization technique replaces actual values with fictional but realistic-looking substitutes that maintain referential integrity?