Privacy preserving electronic data gathering

Most organizations, from private business to scientific institutes, own large information databases. Analysis of these databases can be very beneficial to the owner organizations, as it contributes to knowledge discovery. To extract broader and more accurate conclusions, knowledge discovery techniques need to be applied on a collection of databases of different organizations involved in the same field. This paper addresses two issues associated with electronic data gathering: confidentiality of the organization that supplies a particular database, and authentication of the provided data.