The Royal Society. “Privacy-enhancing technologies.” Accessed 18.08.2025. https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/privacy-enhancing-technologies/.
What are Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)?
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are a suite of tools that can help maximise the use of data by reducing risks inherent to data use. Some PETs provide new tools for anonymisation, while others enable collaborative analysis on privately-held datasets, allowing data to be used without disclosing copies of data. PETs are multi-purpose: they can reinforce data governance choices, serve as tools for data collaboration or enable greater accountability through audit. For these reasons, PETs have also been described as “Partnership Enhancing Technologies” or “Trust Technologies”.
What is data privacy, and why is it important?
The data we generate every day holds a lot of value and potentially also contains sensitive information that individuals or organisations might not wish to share with everyone. The protection of personal or sensitive data featured prominently in the social and ethical tensions identified in our 2017 British Academy and Royal Society report Data management and use: Governance in the 21st century.
How can technology support data governance and enable new, innovative uses of data for public benefit?
The Royal Society’s Privacy Enhancing Technologies programme investigates the potential for tools and approaches collectively known as Privacy Enhancing Technologies, or PETs, in maximising the benefit and reducing the harms associated with data use.
Our 2023 report, From privacy to partnership: the role of Privacy Enhancing Technologies in data governance and collaborative analysis (PDF), was undertaken in close collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, and considers the potential for PETs to revolutionise the safe and rapid use of sensitive data for wider public benefit. It considers the role of these technologies in addressing data governance issues beyond privacy, addressing the following questions:
- How can PETs support data governance and enable new, innovative uses of data for public benefit?
- What are the primary barriers and enabling factors around the adoption of PETs in data governance, and how might these be addressed or amplified?
- How might PETs be factored into frameworks for assessing and balancing risks, harms and benefits when working with personal data?
In answering these questions, our report integrates evidence from a range of sources, including the advisement of an expert Working Group, consultation with a range of stakeholders across sectors, as well as a synthetic data explainer and commissioned reviews on UK public sector PETs adoption (PDF) and PETs standards and assurances (PDF), which are available for download.
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