An overview of privacy engineering tools

Welcome! In this repository we created an overview of useful - and mostly open source - privacy engineering tools, i.e., tools to make it easier to handle personal data in research. For example, we collected useful packages/tools to help de-identify personal data, but also to create synthetic micro-data.

This repository was created as part of the Data Privacy Project, a Research Data Management Support project at Utrecht University that ran between 2021 and 2023 and aimed to collect and improve information, tools and services surrounding personal data in research. It is maintained by Research Data Management Support.

We currently have the following overviews:

• Packages and (open source) software to de-identify (pseudonymise/anonymise) data
• Packages and services to generate synthetic data
• Software to securely analyse or encrypt data

Why this repository?

There are many existing tool overviews. However, many of them are generic, and are therefore not always very useful for scientific researchers. Sometimes, existing tool overviews mention many commercial service providers which are out of reach or simply not permitted for use in research that involves personal data. Therefore, in this repository, our focus is mostly on open source tools and graphical user interfaces which are suited for use in research (and thus not only research performed at Utrecht University).

Disclaimer

Important notes:

1. In no way do we claim that these overviews are complete or fully accurate. Please let us know if we are missing important tools and/or if an existing entry needs correction.
2. We are not responsible for the quality of the tools in this overview. Moreover, the quality of the results when using these tools is largely dependent on your own use of the tool. We recommend using these tools responsibly and being wary of unrealistic promises that tools may make. If a tool we included turns out to be of low quality, please let us know so we can take note of that or remove it from our overview.

License and citation

This repository is licensed under an MIT license. You can cite us via the Zenodo deposit of this repository.

Contact and contribution

If you want to contribute to this repository (e.g., add a new tool, edit an existing entry, etc.) or have a question about this repository, you can:

1. Open a Pull Request in this repository to have your suggestion added to the main branch.
2. Open an Issue to discuss or suggest an edit.
3. Contact Utrecht University's Research Data Management Support if you have another question or suggestion, or if you do not have a GitHub account.