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Ant Group
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Ant Group makes privacy computing framework open source to drive adoption of its technology

  • Ant Group has released the source code for its SecretFlow framework on open source code hosting platforms GitHub and Chinese alternative Gitee
  • Privacy-preserving computing is becoming increasingly important, with 60 per cent of large organisations set to use at least one related technique by 2025

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The logo of Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba, pictured at the company’s headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on October 29, 2020. Photo: Reuters
Coco Feng
Chinese fintech giant Ant Group has made its privacy-preserving computation framework open source in an effort to develop a community around its technology.
The project, named SecretFlow, was made freely available on Monday through Microsoft’s collaborative code development platform GitHub and Chinese alternative Gitee. The framework best fits the C++, Python and Assembly coding languages, according to Ant.

The framework, which is meant to preserve user privacy while conducting data analysis and machine learning, is designed to “address pain points in multiparty collaboration on information flows”, Ant said in a statement.

At the same time, Ant also launched a privacy computing fund with the China Computer Federation. The fund will initially invest more than US$600,000 to support cutting-edge research in this area, which includes the post-quantum multiparty computation and the security of other open source privacy-preserving computing platforms.

Ant is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.

“It is costly for developers to start from scratch, as there are many fundamental technologies involved in the privacy-preserving computing process,” said Lei Wang, general manager of Ant’s privacy computing department.

Demand for privacy-preserving computation is growing as the world becomes increasingly digital. By 2025, 60 per cent of large organisations will use at least one privacy-enhancing technique in analytics, business intelligence or cloud computing, according to market research firm Gartner.

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