Statistical Mathematics Research Institute Associate Professor Takao Murakami Appointed Advisor at ZenmuTech

ZenmuTech, Inc. (hereinafter, ZenmuTech), which pursues data protection and data utilization through its "secret sharing technology" for encrypted and distributed data management, is pleased to announce that it has appointed Associate Professor Takao Murakami of the Department of Interdisciplinary Statistics, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics (hereinafter, ISM), National Institutes of Natural Sciences, as an advisor to strengthen its research and development system in the field of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs).

[Background of Advisor Appointment]

ZenmuTech is working on the social implementation of a secure data utilization platform that utilizes secret sharing and secret computation technologies.

In recent years, while expectations are rising for secret computation technology, which enables analysis of data while keeping it confidential, addressing the risk that information about the original data may be inferred from the analysis results themselves, so-called "output privacy," has become an important issue.

Murakami is known as a leading expert in the fields of differential privacy and privacy-preserving data analysis, and is engaged in advanced research activities centered at ISM.

To date, ZenmuTech has received academic and technical support from Murakami regarding output privacy in its efforts toward the social implementation of secret computation technology. As a result, the options and accuracy of technological approaches that balance safety and practicality have greatly expanded, yielding results that are even being considered for submission to international conferences.

To further enhance our R&D capabilities and improve our competitive advantage in the PETs domain based on secret sharing and secret computation technologies, we have invited Murakami to serve as an advisor.

Associate Professor Takao Murakami (Department of Interdisciplinary Statistics, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics)

One of the leading researchers in Japan in fields such as differential privacy, data anonymization, and privacy-preserving data analysis, with a wide range of achievements from theoretical research to social implementation.

Profile of Takao Murakami:

Completed doctoral program at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo. Ph.D. (Information Science and Technology). Served as a researcher at Hitachi, Ltd., a researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and a senior researcher at AIST, before becoming an associate professor at The Institute of Statistical Mathematics in 2023. Visiting researcher at the University of California, San Diego in 2020. Received the Funai Academic Award in 2020. Specializes in differential privacy, data anonymization, and privacy-preserving data analysis.

https://sites.google.com/view/takaomurakami-jp

[Future Outlook]

Moving forward, we will leverage Murakami's expertise and research experience to advance PETs-related technologies based on our secret sharing technology, secret computation technology, and output privacy technology, while also developing world-class security solutions and maximizing corporate value.

[About ZenmuTech]

ZenmuTech, Inc.

Location: 5F, Ichigo Shinkawa Building, 2-22-1 Shinkawa, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Established: March 4, 2014

Representative: Yasuhisa Abe, President and CEO

Business Activities: Provision of data protection solutions using secret sharing technology and a secret computation database platform

Stock Code: 338A

URL: https://zenmutech.com/

Secret sharing technology is a technique that enhances data protection and security by dividing data into several "meaningless fragments" and managing each fragment in a separate environment.

ZenmuTech develops and sells its own products, including ZENMU Engine, a software development kit (SDK) for secret sharing technology, and ZENMU Virtual Drive, which prevents information leakage from PCs, and these products are used by many companies.

In the field of secret computation, which allows computation while keeping data confidential, we offer the secret computation database platform "QueryAhead®" in collaboration with AIST for research and social implementation.