Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop Proceedings

On April 25, 2025, the Future of Privacy Forum and the Mozilla Foundation co-hosted a Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Workshop in Washington, DC, convening industry, academia, and civil society experts to explore practical applications of PETs. The workshop featured two leading-edge use cases: Mastercard’s cross-border fraud detection system using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), and Oblivious’s approach to end-of-life data retention via Differential Privacy. Discussions emphasized the growing role of PETs in reconciling privacy with operational needs, such as enabling international financial compliance or preserving actuarial insights after mandated data deletion. Participants explored how PETs can mitigate risks across jurisdictions, where regulatory clarity is still evolving, and agreed that no single PET can solve all privacy challenges. Key takeaways included the importance of regulatory sandboxes, synthetic data, cross-functional collaboration, and the urgent need for incentives and clearer legal frameworks to support broader PET adoption.

The Research Coordination Network (RCN) for Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing and Analytics is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award #2413978 and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under Award #DE-SC0024884.