Introduction
The depth of studies increases alongside the technological progress of humanity. Genetics is one of the scientific fields that benefit greatly from these advancements, as many of its aspects rely on the analysis of massive data sets. However, when scientists began working with human DNA, it became apparent that its immense complexity covers highly personal information, which falls under the protection of privacy laws of many countries (Bonomi et al., 2020). Nowadays, disputes over additional measures of genome sequence cyphering remain open. This essay will review the presented issue from the position of the scientific community and lawmakers.
Main body
There are several challenges that lie ahead of security specialists when dealing with genome sequences. First of all, it is impossible to anonymize this information and keep it useable at the same time since depersonalized genome loses many aspects that are crucial for researchers (Mahdi et al., 2017). Second, DNA data must remain accessible from numerous locations across the globe, meaning that it must be shared via the Internet. Moreover, healthcare data laws require different handling methods depending on the country of an individual who provided their DNA (Bonomi et al., 2020). The dangers of data sharing are apparent, yet there is no unified solution that could be applied to this case.
Sharing genomic information is essential for many types of research in this field of study. However, data leaks are inevitable, especially when the security measures among companies that handle genome sequences vary depending on financing (Bonomi et al., 2020). One of the most vulnerable spots in data security is the transfer of information. Privacy during sharing can be achieved through cryptographic algorithms, although they impose additional expenditures and slow down the working process (Bonomi et al., 2020). Several healthcare institutions work closely with cybersecurity organizations to develop a complex set of data protection measures to ensure that these uniquely individual sequences will remain undecipherable in case of a leakage (Bonomi et al., 2020). IT-security companies must cooperate with researchers closely to alleviate this problem.
For a proper resolution of this issue, all parties must be involved in the process. Collaboration of governmental entities, cryptographers, and geneticists is essential for ensuring that a chosen method of data protection will be both secure and keep information usable for scientific purposes (Yakubu & Chen, 2019). The ability to trace identities through DNA sequences may become more accessible in the nearest future, which would open opportunities for criminals to utilize this knowledge for their benefit (Yakubu & Chen, 2019). While it is in the best interests of the scientific community to have more open access to DNA banks, governments would want to avoid providing more opportunities for fraudulent activities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, additional layers of data protection for genome sequences are essential, as there is a great deal of personal information hidden within DNA. Since these security measures may hamper scientific advantages, companies should work on creating algorithms that will be easy to use by researchers and next to indecipherable by unauthorized parties. It is understandable that governments would want to create additional restrictive policies that may harm the ability of scientists to freely share their studies related to the human genome with the spread of related technologies. I believe that security must take a higher position in this discussion, although policymakers must also ensure that scientists will be included in these laws as primary stakeholders.
References
Bonomi, L., Huang, Y., & Ohno-Machado, L. (2020). Privacy challenges and research opportunities for genomic data sharing. Nature Genetics, 52(7), 646-654.
Mahdi, M. S., Hasan, M. Z., & Mohammed, N. (2017). Secure sequence similarity search on encrypted Genomic data. 2017 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE).
Yakubu, A. M., & Chen, Y. P. (2019). Ensuring privacy and security of genomic data and functionalities. Briefings in Bioinformatics, 21(2), 511-526.