Functional dependencies and their connection with security of statistical databases

摘要

The term “security of a statistical database” usually refers to the problem of inference control. There are two main categories of inference controls in statistical databases: restrictions and perturbations. The influence of functional dependencies (which may hold among attributes in a statistical database) on restriction techniques is studied. For some techniques, either on the table or cell level, we demonstrate how these dependencies might lead to a compromise. It is shown that functional dependencies may decrease the effectiveness of several known inference controls (more precisely: output restriction controls). For some methods we give the way to overcome nondesirable influence of dependencies on control techniques.