# The forbidden index: Building privacy-preserving search with OpenSearch

DevFeed: [The forbidden index: Building privacy-preserving search with OpenSearch](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-forbidden-index-building-privacy-preserving-search-with-opensearch-12790.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://opensearch.org/blog/the-forbidden-index-building-privacy-preserving-search-with-opensearch/>)

Author: Kylie Wagar-Dirks

Published: 2026-07-24T15:00:22Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [OpenSearch](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/opensearch.md>)

Topics: [Open Source](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/open-source.md>), [Access Control](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/access-control.md>), [pii](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/pii.md>), [dashboards](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/dashboards.md>), [tokenization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tokenization.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>), [elasticsearch](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/elasticsearch.md>), [Framework](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/framework.md>)

Tags: [analytics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/analytics.md>), [analytics-stack](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/analytics-stack.md>), [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [compliance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compliance.md>), [dashboards](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dashboards.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [dynamic-data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dynamic-data.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>), [opensearch](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/opensearch.md>), [pii](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pii.md>), [plugin](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/plugin.md>), [privacy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/privacy.md>), [search](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/search.md>), [tokenization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tokenization.md>)

## AI overview

The article describes a talk by Unnati Mishra and Akshat Khanna on building privacy-preserving search and analytics with OpenSearch. Their approach moves privacy controls into the ingest layer, using a custom plugin to redact PII at index time through tokenization and dynamic data masking. It also applies differential privacy to OpenSearch Dashboards by adding calibrated noise to aggregate query results.

## Source excerpt

At OpenSearchCon Europe 2026, Unnati Mishra and Akshat Khanna (Angel One) argued that privacy in search must be handled during the ingest phase rather than retroactively through access controls. The post The forbidden index: Building privacy-preserving search with OpenSearch appeared first on OpenSearch.