The Key to FinCrime? Encryption, Privacy Enhancing Technologies and the data-sharing challenge

A common refrain amongst FinCrime professionals is that it would be easier to take on the criminals if they were more readily able to share sensitive information between organisations. Whereas criminals have no barriers to worry about in this regard, those tasked with detecting and disrupting them have to follow closely the requirements of data and privacy law, which have often proved prohibitive.

For some time, the problem has been without a potential solution. However, over recent years, the development of advanced encryption techniques, often described as ‘Privacy Enhancing Technologies’ (PETs), have opened up new opportunities for smart data sharing. According to their proponents, PETs can help institutions combine and analyse sensitive data that remains can encrypted throughout – effectively ‘sharing’ without sharing.

The potential implications for financial intelligence partnerships are significant and have thus become a major topic of interest amongst FinCrime professionals. In this session, our experts will explore the promise of PETs: from the potential FinCrime ‘use cases’, the evidence of value and workability, to the practical challenges – from the technological to the regulatory – they might also bring.