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Building Trust in Synthetic Data

Key Points

  • Enterprises must gauge the trustworthiness of synthetic data, especially when it replaces privacy‑restricted real data that fuels decision‑making.
  • Trust can be secured through three key levers: data **quality**, privacy safeguards, and a robust **deployment** framework.
  • Quality assurance involves both column‑level checks (matching distributions and preserving inter‑column correlations) and row‑level checks (ensuring logical consistency of generated records).
  • Privacy controls are essential to guarantee that synthetic datasets do not inadvertently expose sensitive information or increase regulatory risk.
  • A reliable deployment setup—including proper monitoring, governance, and integration pipelines—ensures synthetic data can be used confidently across business units, risk teams, and data science workflows.

Full Transcript

# Building Trust in Synthetic Data **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQtSa9ngqQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQtSa9ngqQk) **Duration:** 00:08:08 ## Summary - Enterprises must gauge the trustworthiness of synthetic data, especially when it replaces privacy‑restricted real data that fuels decision‑making. - Trust can be secured through three key levers: data **quality**, privacy safeguards, and a robust **deployment** framework. - Quality assurance involves both column‑level checks (matching distributions and preserving inter‑column correlations) and row‑level checks (ensuring logical consistency of generated records). - Privacy controls are essential to guarantee that synthetic datasets do not inadvertently expose sensitive information or increase regulatory risk. - A reliable deployment setup—including proper monitoring, governance, and integration pipelines—ensures synthetic data can be used confidently across business units, risk teams, and data science workflows. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQtSa9ngqQk&t=0s) **Enterprise Trust in Synthetic Data** - The speaker explains how synthetic data lets companies safely unlock privacy‑restricted information for faster insights, and outlines the quality, privacy, and risk controls required for business, compliance, and data‑science teams to trust its use. ## Full Transcript
0:00today I want to talk about trust and 0:02this isn't trust between two people but 0:04rather an Enterprise's ability to trust 0:08the synthetic Tabler data that they 0:10create now this is important it's 0:13important because data still drives 0:15decision making and because of that 0:17companies collect a lot of 0:19it they collect across a variety of 0:22domains ranging from 0:26Financial to customer data as well as to 0:31Ops 0:32data now unfortunately not all this data 0:35can be accessed they can't get value 0:37from all this data and that's because of 0:38data privacy data privacy locks up a lot 0:42of this 0:44data and for that reason companies are 0:46looking at leveraging synthetic data 0:49specifically targeting the data that 0:52can't be accessed so creating High 0:55Fidelity data sets of their financial 0:58data and potentially their customer 1:01data now this is important because with 1:04the synthetic data they'll have more 1:07data which means more insights quicker 1:08go to market more 1:10Innovation but the question we hear 1:12always is can we trust this 1:16data synthetic data it's fake data can 1:19we trust it now the short answer is yes 1:22you can but it also depends if you have 1:25the right levers in place now this is 1:27important if you're line of business 1:29they want to make make sure that the 1:30data is high quality if you're in Risk 1:33privacy and compliance they want to make 1:34sure that this data doesn't expose them 1:36to any more risk and if you're 1:38Downstream a data scientist or data 1:40Moder you also want to make sure that 1:41data is high quality privacy protected 1:43and can address your use case so today 1:46we're going to talk about three levers 1:48that companies can put in place to make 1:50sure that they can confidently and 1:52reliably use a synthetic data that they 1:56generate the first will be building 1:58trust through quality 2:03the second will be building trust 2:04through 2:07privacy and the third will be building 2:10trust through your deployment 2:14setup now let's walk through each of 2:16these and break them 2:19down when we talk about quality what I'm 2:21referring to here is how closely does 2:24the synthetic 2:25data align with your real data from a 2:29statistical perspective persective and 2:30we can look at this from two ways 2:33one column 2:35quality with column quality we're really 2:38concerned with column distributions and 2:40column correlations now distributions 2:42making sure that distribution of the 2:43synthetic output aligns with the real 2:45data and the correlation is making sure 2:47that every column correlation both one 2:49to one and one to many also AE now often 2:53times you'll have metrics that get 2:55generated that give you insight into 2:57each of these two aspects so as long as 2:59you have that it should have trust in 3:00the column quality the second aspect of 3:03quality is row 3:06quality now there are two examples here 3:09let's say you know we want to generate 3:11synthetic data that has customer data it 3:14says you know he or she lives in Austin 3:17Texas 3:1978702 now our synthetic data output 3:21doesn't have to align exactly with that 3:23but there should be some logical 3:25consistency in other words it shouldn't 3:27say New York Alaska 78 3:30702 the second aspect of Ro quality 3:34refers to kind of 3:37formulas some relationships are rigid 3:40and have to be maintained for example if 3:42we're leveraging financial 3:44data we may have profit revenue and cost 3:48which we have to maintain you want to 3:50make sure that in your synthetic data 3:52tool you have the ability to maintain 3:54these relationships through formulas so 3:56that the output can still align and be 3:58useful Downstream 4:00now with those two measures in place 4:03quality you should have trusted let's 4:05talk about 4:07privacy with privacy this is important 4:09because remember we're still leveraging 4:11pii so we want to make sure that none of 4:14this pii data gets exposed and we want 4:16to have two things in 4:18place the first is a mechanism to apply 4:22to our training data to make sure that 4:24none of this data gets exposed now it's 4:26important to know that there's a 4:27relationship between quality and 4:31privacy typically the more privacy you 4:34have the less quality you have now 4:36traditional techniques anonymization 4:38masking do a fantastic job at privacy 4:42but not so great at quality but they're 4:45all Alternatives differential privacy we 4:48can abbreviate as 4:51DP is one approach that can still give 4:53you the Privacy you need while 4:55maintaining allow the quality and 4:58utility the second aspect of privacy is 5:00to make sure that we have 5:03metrics the mechanism will allow you to 5:06apply privacy the metrics will tell you 5:08how much risk you're potentially exposed 5:11to now often time you'll have a metric 5:15around 5:17leakage leakage tells you well how much 5:20of this real data potentially trickled 5:22in and snuck into your synthetic data 5:24set the lower the better but ideally you 5:27want to take this a step further you 5:29want understand what what's the 5:30probability of an inference ATT Tech the 5:33probability of a third party potentially 5:36identifying sensitive information my 5:38synthetic data set with these two 5:40metrics and with the mechanisms in place 5:43you should have pretty good confidence 5:45in the your the privacy of your 5:47synthetic data now let's talk about 5:52deployment the 5:53first question we should think about is 5:56well should we go on Prem or should we 5:58go cloud 6:01a lot of companies today are shifting 6:02their workloads to the cloud and that 6:05makes sense there's scale there's 6:07efficiency continuous updates but not 6:09all workloads are meant for the cloud 6:12with synthetic data because we're 6:14leveraging pii a lot of companies don't 6:16feel comfortable sending Pi data to a 6:18third party Cloud so in this case trust 6:21can be built through an on-prem 6:24deployment that being said once you do 6:27generate synthetic data that is high 6:29quality and privacy protected you can 6:32consider deploying those synthetic data 6:34sets Downstream through a cloud 6:36deployment so you could potentially 6:37leverage both in this 6:39case the second aspect of deployment 6:42should we consider 6:44centralized or 6:47decentralized and what I mean by this is 6:49should we let everyone create data and 6:52consume data or should we separate those 6:55roles given the variety of the data sets 6:58that we see the variety thresholds from 7:00quality and privacy across a variety of 7:02use cases trust can better be built 7:05through po potentially a centralized 7:08approach in this case we're limiting it 7:11to a group of people who generate the 7:13data uh they make sure that has a 7:16quality standard they work with the 7:17privacy and risk team to make sure that 7:20they are privacy protected and then once 7:22these two measures are met they can then 7:24push them to potentially a cloud for 7:27Downstream use now how can trust be 7:30built well first can it be trusted 7:32absolutely that's a yes now it's 7:35provided you have the right quality 7:37measures in place you have the right 7:40privacy protection in place and of 7:42course you have the right deployment in 7:45place as well now with those three you 7:47are more than happy to send them 7:49Downstream and to begin to reap all the 7:52benefits of your synthetic data if you 7:55like this video want to see more like it 7:57please like And subscribe if you have 7:59any question questions or want to share 8:00your thoughts about this topic please 8:02leave a comment 8:05below