GMV’s proposal selected for the White Paper Prize for Best Privacy-Enhancing Technologies in UK-US Prize Challenge

Driven by a shared priority to employ data to help solve critical global challenges to affirm the US’s and UK’s commitments to democratic values and the fundamental right to privacy, the challenges focused on developing PETs solutions for two scenarios: forecasting pandemic infection and detecting financial crime.

World-leading experts from academic institutions, global technology companies, and privacy start-ups competed for cash prizes from a combined UK-U.S. prize pool of $1.6 million (£1.3 million). The winning solutions combined different PETs to allow the AI models to learn to make better predictions without exposing sensitive data. This focus on combining privacy approaches encouraged the development of innovative solutions that address practical data privacy concerns in real-world scenarios.

In the final phase of the challenges, the privacy guarantees of the solutions were tested by “red team” attempts to reveal the original data used to train the models. The resilience of the solutions to these attacks determined the final winners. The UK participants also received support from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to help them consider how their solutions could demonstrate compliance with critical UK data protection regulation principles.

Among the “UK Winners” we find GMV with the recognition of White Paper Prizes. According to Juan Miguel Auñón-García, Data Scientist at GMV, “Of the aspects assessed by Innovate UK (the UK’s National Innovation Agency) for the research and development we carried out, GMV’s innovative nature stands out. GMV proposed a boosting algorithm with distributed learning and guaranteed privacy thanks to an encryption technique known as Secure Multi Party Computation. In the financial sector, this technique is a breakthrough when it comes to taking full advantage of the confidential data of several institutions but guaranteeing their privacy. As he notes, “this recognition positions us as a technology company of reference in the field of PETs, on a par with research groups and well-known companies also finalists.”

The prize challenges were designed and provided through a collaborative, bilateral process. In the UK, the challenges were provided by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Innovate UK. In the United States, the challenges were funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation, with partnership from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Additional support was provided by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK Financial Conduct Authority, NHS England Transformation, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Swift, and the University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute.

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