Models and algorithms for the microdata protection problem

This article focuses on the mathematical modeling and an algorithmic approach to microdata protection based on a strategy of local suppression and global recoding. Protecting sensitive individual information using such an approach must be balanced against the usefulness of the resulting edited datafile. We discuss the two subproblems of suppression and recoding of microdata in light of the information loss that occurs. We combine them into an overall disclosure problem formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem. We describe how to decompose the problem into smaller more tractable parts and how to use local search methods to find good approximations of the optimal solution.Keywords:Mathematical modeling; optimization algorithms. <br/