Data security
Reasons to protect your genomic data and description of our methods to ensure highest level of security and privacy.
Why protect your genome?
Genomic data is your most personal information, the blueprint that makes you specifically you. It is:
Personally identifiable: You and biological family members can be re-identified from ‘anonymised’ and ‘de-identified’ genomic data.
Highly sensitive: Your genome contains much more information about you than you know about yourself, potentially revealing details you may not want others to know.
Increasingly valuable: To pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies, healthcare providers, but also malicious actors such as hackers.
This is data that can be exploited in ways we cannot even imagine yet. This is more important to protect than your bank numbers, your social security numbers. In proving you are really you, nothing is more concrete proof than your genome. This is why we hypothesize your genome will become akin to your passport. Your true identification documentation. Without trying to scaremonger, let’s look at some of the ways this can be exploited.
Some examples:
Synthesis of cells with your DNA being planted at crime scenes
Refusal of health insurance because you are ‘at risk of heart disease’
Being fired from a job because of your disease profile
How do we protect your data ?
We have built a tech stack that allows individuals to claim full ownership of their genome in their personal ‘DNA Vault’ and control access to third parties from their mobile device. We leverage secure encryption virtualisation (SEV) to securely store individual’s genomic data in encrypted form, inaccessible to anyone (including us) except the private key holder. We harness the Ethereum blockchain to immutably store an audit log of exactly who has accessed your data for full transparency. You have full private access to your genome and when researchers want to pay for access to your data, you can grant access to anonymous snippets of your genome and receive your share of the money.
Alternatives
In our blog post, we described different ways to have your genome sequenced and why we believe its critical to prioritize data security while choosing them.
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