Abstract
We consider the problem of securing statistical databases and, more specifically, the micro-aggregation technique (MAT), which coalesces the individual records in the micro-data file into groups or classes, and on being queried, reports, for the all individual values, the aggregated means of the corresponding group. This problem is known to be NP-hard and has been tackled using many heuristic solutions. In this paper we present the first reported Learning Automaton (LA) based solution to the MAT. The LA modifies a fixed-structure solution to the Equi-Partitioning Problem (EPP) to solve the micro-aggregation problem. The scheme has been implemented, rigorously tested and evaluated for different real and simulated data sets. The results clearly demonstrate the applicability of LA to the micro-aggregation problem, and to yield a solution that obtains a lower information loss when compared to the best available heuristic methods for micro-aggregation.
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Fayyoumi, E., Oommen, B.J. (2006). A Fixed Structure Learning Automaton Micro-aggregation Technique for Secure Statistical Databases. In: Domingo-Ferrer, J., Franconi, L. (eds) Privacy in Statistical Databases. PSD 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4302. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11930242_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11930242_11
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