Privacy Engineering — Tokenisation and k-Anonymity

Manish Garg
Manish Garg Associate of (ISC)² · RingSafe
Apr 26, 2026
3 min read
Read as

Last updated: April 29, 2026

Privacy-preserving primitives — tokenisation, format-preserving encryption, k-anonymity, l-diversity, differential privacy — when each applies, the engineering trade-offs, and DPDP §10 implications.

An Indian healthtech wanted to publish anonymised research data — patient records with names removed but dates, ages, PIN codes retained. The privacy engineer ran a re-identification analysis: 87% of records were uniquely identifiable from those three fields alone. Sweeney’s seminal research on US data showed similar; her techniques apply to Indian datasets. They didn’t publish. This module covers privacy engineering — the technical discipline of making data actually anonymous (or accepting that it isn’t).

What privacy engineering is

Privacy engineering is the technical practice of building systems that protect personal data by design. Beyond policy and consent — the actual data structures, algorithms, and architectures.

DPDP Act in your stack?

Get a DPDP gap assessment

Free 30-minute call. We map your data flows against DPDP §8 obligations and tell you exactly which gaps to fix first. Auditor-defensible output.

Book DPDP scoping call Replies in 4 working hrs · India-only · Senior consultants