Data Privatisation
A new approach to data theft, starting from the perspective of value
Every business holds data that someone would like to steal. Today’s security primarily tries to keep them out by using the physical lock and key approach.
Data Privatisation starts from a different place. Remove the value from your data and you remove the motive for stealing it. Our approach does not stop the theft but, should it happen, it renders the data useless.
Risk Profile – how exposed are you?
Fill this in first. Pick from the dropdowns and answer Yes or No. The score builds from what is most hacked, most sold, and most targeted — see the note at the foot.
Basis of the score (2025 industry data): credentials are the most common way in and personal data the most commonly exposed (Verizon DBIR 2025); payment cards, bank logins, identity “fullz”, government IDs and especially health records are the most traded stolen data; financial services and healthcare are the most breached and most costly sectors (ITRC 2025; IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025), and small businesses are hit far more often. Indicative guide, not a formal assessment.
Data and information are two different things
We tend to treat all data alike, and that is where the problem starts. Data actually exists in two states:
- Raw data. Numbers, words and characters with no immediate use, and so no value. The building blocks.
- Information. Data organised into something useful, such as a phone number, an email address or card details. This is data of value.
Losing raw data is no real loss. Losing information is. The solution therefore is to store data as raw data.
How it works
- Break information down into raw data. A normal record holds everything about a person in one row, so whoever takes that row has their information. Data Privatisation splits each record into fragments and spreads them across separate tables, shuffled so that each row holds pieces from many different people and no information at all. The beauty of our solution is that the data stays fully searchable.
Table 1 – Before privatisation (each record keeps its own row colour, used for demonstration purposes alone)
First Name Last Name Address A Town/City County Country Postcode Chloe Green 84 Station Street Birmingham West Midlands UK B9 3OW Charlie Turner 23 School Lane Edinburgh Midlothian UK EH7 4KO Theo Taylor 59 Chapel Street Leeds West Yorkshire UK LS5 9AP Harry King 53 Grove Street Cardiff South Glamorgan UK CF1 5UU William Cox 70 Grove Street Glasgow Lanarkshire UK G6 5GZ Jessica Wilson 57 North Lane Liverpool Merseyside UK L6 6OX Isabella Hill 28 High Street Leeds West Yorkshire UK LS8 6RA Isla Mitchell 98 Church Road Liverpool Merseyside UK L2 6ZO Table 2 – After privatisation (data split and each slot block shuffled independently; colours travel with their values)First Name Last Name Address A-1S1 Address A-1S2 Town/City County Country Postcode-1S1 Postcode-1S2 Charlie King 84 North Lane Liverpool Lanarkshire UK LS5 6RA Isabella Green 57 Chapel Street Glasgow Midlothian UK L2 5UU Harry Wilson 59 Church Road Edinburgh West Yorkshire UK G6 3OW Theo Cox 23 High Street Birmingham Merseyside UK CF1 6ZO Chloe Taylor 98 Grove Street Leeds South Glamorgan UK EH7 6OX William Hill 53 Station Street Leeds Merseyside UK L6 4KO Jessica Mitchell 70 School Lane Cardiff West Midlands UK LS8 9AP Isla Turner 28 Grove Street Liverpool West Yorkshire UK B9 5GZ - Link it with codes of no value. The fragments are tied together by codes that mean nothing on their own, leaving nothing for a hacker to use. The result – it is next to impossible to crack!
- Match the protection to the value. Not all data is worth the same, so not all of it needs the same protection. Some data can be kept as plain text, allowing it to be searched, whereas sensitive data is always stored encrypted, such as credit card data.
- Rebuild only what is asked for. You can limit the data exposed so that only the task specific information is returned at any stage of a search therefore privacy is preserved in the elimination process. For example, ask for a phone number and you get the phone number, and nothing else from the record it came from, nor anyone else’s information. You decide what data needs to be visible by task, and we will set it up.
What it means for your business
- Protect your information and share your data. For the first time the two go together. You can hold someone else’s data without ever holding their information.
- Less risk and cost under GDPR. Information is never stored as information, which greatly reduces the risk and cost that GDPR places on a business.
- An end to theft from the inside. Staff and systems receive only what a task needs. No one sees a whole record, and never the whole table or database.
- One small target to defend. Security is focused on the connecting codes and the rebuilding process, a far smaller and more controllable target than every database that holds personal information.
- Always under your control. Records can be added or removed at any time without disturbing anyone else’s access. The sequence can be rebuilt whenever you choose, sending any would-be hacker back to the start. For once, it’s the hacker who must play catch-up.
- Low running cost. Once the software is in place, the computer does the work, with a nominal monthly fee to use the software.
Working software
The software is now in its fourth version, developed over the past decade and tested from the first search right through to adding and removing records without having to reshuffle the entire data table. It uses modern encryption and cipher generation.
We would welcome the chance to show you what it can do with your data. Get in touch