A novel policy-driven reversible anonymisation scheme for XML-based services

Abstract

This paper proposes a reversible anonymisation scheme for XML messages that supports fine-grained enforcement of XACML-based privacy policies. Reversible anonymisation means that information in XML messages is anonymised, however the information required to reverse the anonymisation is cryptographically protected in the messages. The policy can control access down to octet ranges of individual elements or attributes in XML messages. The reversible anonymisation protocol effectively implements a multi-level privacy and security based approach, so that only authorised stakeholders can disclose confidential information up to the privacy or security level they are authorised for. The approach furthermore supports a shared secret based scheme, where stakeholders need to agree to disclose confidential information. Last, it supports time limited access to private or confidential information. This opens up for improved control of access to private or confidential information in XML messages used by a service oriented architecture. The solution provides horizontally scalable confidentiality protection for certain types of big data applications, like XML databases, secure logging and data retention repositories.