On the protection of consumer genomic data in the Internet of Living Things

Abstract Several companies have recently emerged to provide online Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) DNA analysis and sequencing . Those activities will be, in the near future, the foundations of the emerging Internet of Living Things . The concept of Internet of Living Things has been introduced to characterize networks of biological sequencing sensors, which could rely on cloud-based analysis capabilities, to support the users in deeply studying DNA or other molecules. Sequencing sensors have many fields of application and much more will likely to come. In this context, DNA microarray images represent the core of modern genomic data analysis, since they allow the simultaneous monitoring of many thousands of genes and represent a sort of “container”, not only for storing genomics data, but also for managing, sharing and exchanging such type of data. In this scenario, the ability to protect genomics and medical big data is a growing challenge. In particular, for what concerns DNA microarray images, the techniques commonly employed for data protection are not effective due for example to the unauthorized use or manipulation after decryption or the lost of metadata during image processing. In this paper we address the problem of protecting such type of information, by means of watermarking techniques. In particular, we propose reversible watermarking techniques explicitly tailored for the characteristics of DNA microarray images to ensure the protection of such images in terms of authenticity and integrity, besides enabling the binding of those imaging data with other information related to them. We assess the effectiveness and efficiency of our techniques by means of a working prototype.