Our mission at Privacy Dynamics is turning complex privacy processes into simple automated tools. As we bootstrapped the first release of our product, we went through several cycles of experimentation and evaluation using different privacy preserving strategies to determine which would be the best fit for the most users. In this talk, I'll present our process of comparing the latest privacy preserving techniques, demonstrate the inherent tradeoffs of each method, and explain how we arrived at a design to maximize data utility while still responsibly addressing privacy risk.
Will Thompson is the Principal Software Engineer at Privacy Dynamics, where he leads the design and implementation of the data privacy company’s web and data science applications. Prior to joining Privacy Dynamics in 2019, Will was Chief Software Engineer at O’Connor’s, where he helped build out their digital legal research platform—including search, NLP, analytics, and automated tools—and in 2018 guided the developer team through the company’s acquisition by Thomson Reuters and integration into Westlaw. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Will’s areas of expertise include search, markup, and multi-model database systems. He received his B.A. from Rice University, double majoring in Computer Science and Visual Arts. Will is based in Austin, Texas.