Modifying Transactional Databases to Hide Sensitive Association Rules

Abstract

Although firms recognize the value in sharing data with supply chain partners, many remain reluctant to share for fear of sensitive information potentially making its way to competitors. Approaches that can help hide sensitive information could alleviate such concerns and increase the number of firms that are willing to share. Sensitive information in transactional databases often manifests itself in the form of association rules. The sensitive association rules can be concealed by altering transactions so that they remain hidden when the data are mined by the partner. The problem of hiding these rules in the data are computationally difficult (NP-hard), and extant approaches are all heuristic in nature. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that introduces the problem as a nonlinear integer formulation to hide the sensitive association rule while minimizing the alterations needed in the data set. We apply transformations that linearize the constraints and derive various results that help reduce the size of the problem to be solved. Our results show that although the nonlinear integer formulations are not practical, the linearizations and problem-reduction steps make a significant impact on solvability and solution time. This approach mitigates potential risks associated with sharing and should increase data sharing among supply chain partners.