Cognitive Iterative Minimization of Personally Identifiable Information in Electronic Documents

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed by a data processing system, causes the data processing system to:

• receive, by an iterative personally identifiable information minimization (IPIIM) engine executing in the data processing system, an electronic document comprising natural language content having a mention of a protected entity;
• apply, by the IPIIM engine, natural language processing and analytic analysis on the natural language content to obfuscate the mention of the protected entity and thereby generate a first minimized natural language content;
• process, by a question answering computing system, the first minimized natural language content to generate a first listing of one or more candidate answers and corresponding confidence scores;
• determine, by the IPIIM engine, whether or not the first minimized natural language content is sufficiently obfuscated based on the first listing of one or more candidate answers and corresponding confidence scores;
• and
• in response to determining that the first minimized natural language content is sufficiently obfuscated, provide the first minimized natural language content as a final minimized natural language content of the electronic document for processing by a requestor computing device.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• receive, by an iterative personally identifiable information minimization (IPIIM) engine executing on the processor, an electronic document comprising natural language content having a mention of a protected entity;
• apply, by the IPIIM engine, natural language processing and analytic analysis on the natural language content to obfuscate the mention of the protected entity and thereby generate a first minimized natural language content;
• process, by a question answering computing system, the first minimized natural language content to generate a first listing of one or more candidate answers and corresponding confidence scores;
• determine, by the IPIIM engine, whether or not the first minimized natural language content is sufficiently obfuscated based on the first listing of one or more candidate answers and corresponding confidence scores;
• and
• in response to determining that the first minimized natural language content is sufficiently obfuscated, provide the first minimized natural language content as a final minimized natural language content of the electronic document for processing by a requestor computing device.