There is a broad consensus today on the need to strengthen the individuals’ control on the management of their personal data. But the way to achieve this goal is still debatable. Centralized solutions, including the majority of personal data lockers/vaults, are putting all their efforts on securing the servers. However, as recently demonstrated by the …
Category: Technology
How does it work?
The main idea of PlugDB is to embed in secure hardware (e.g., smart cards with large storage capacity) software components capable of acquiring, storing and managing various forms of personal data (e.g., payment slips, bills, bank statements, medical data, geolocation traces, etc.) depending on the target applications. PlugDB organizes the personal space of an individual …
Hardware security
PlugDB roots its security in the secure hardware in which it is embedded. Although there is a wide variety of such secure devices (mass storage SIM card, secure USB key, secure token, smart dongle, etc.), all can be abstracted by (1) a Trusted Execution Environment and (2) a large storage space (potentially untrusted and therefore …
About technological barriers
PlugDB is a full-fledged DBMS (Database Management System) embedded in secure hardware. PlugDB stores data in relational tables, provides indexing and SQL query capabilities, ensures the logical (integrity constraints) and physical (transactional atomicity) data integrity, and most importantly, protects data through declarative access control policies (i.e., which user can access the data satisfying a given …
