√  High proliferation of data sharing - firms eager in increasing competitive advantage and improving efficiency thru data analysis or mining

√  Data sharing with 3rd party organization without privacy protection can be risky - it is easy today to abuse individual privacy with digital snooping or combining  multiple data sources

√  Conversely, increase in ethical standards and privacy compliance regulations is preventing data sharing

√  Existing solutions focus more on security (encryption),  rather than privacy

√  Current privacy solutions - like de-identification - lack rigor, do not preserve data integrity and are vulnerable for data snoopers