Advancing differential privacy: where we are now and future directions for real-world deployment

  • Rachel Cummings ,
  • Damien Desfontaines ,
  • David Evans ,
  • Roxana Geambasu ,
  • Yangsibo Huang ,
  • Matthew Jagielski ,
  • Peter Kairouz ,
  • Gautam Kamath ,
  • Sewoong Oh ,
  • Olga Ohrimenko ,
  • Nicolas Papernot ,
  • Ryan Rogers ,
  • Milan Shen ,
  • Shuang Song ,
  • Weijie Su ,
  • Andreas Terzis ,
  • Abhradeep Thakurta ,
  • Sergei Vassilvitskii ,
  • Yu-Xiang Wang ,
  • Li Xiong ,
  • Da Yu ,
  • ,
  • Huanyu Zhang ,
  • Wanrong Zhang

Harvard Data Science Review | , Vol 6(1)

In this article, we present a detailed review of current practices and state-of-the-art methodologies in the field of differential privacy (DP), with a focus of advancing DP’s deployment in real-world applications. Key points and high-level contents of the article were originated from the discussions from “Differential Privacy (DP): Challenges Towards the Next Frontier,” a workshop held in July 2022 with experts from industry, academia, and the public sector seeking answers to broad questions pertaining to privacy and its implications in the design of industry-grade systems.

This article aims to provide a reference point for the algorithmic and design decisions within the realm of privacy, highlighting important challenges and potential research directions. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, this article delves into the infrastructure needs for designing private systems, methods for achieving better privacy/utility trade-offs, performing privacy attacks and auditing, as well as communicating privacy with broader audiences and stakeholders.