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