A method to manage raw genomic data (SAM/BAM files) in a privacy preserving manner in a biobank. By using order preserving encryption of the reads' positions, the method provides a requested range of nucleotides to a medical unit, without revealing the locations of the short reads (which include the requested nucleotides) to the biobank.The method prevents the leakage of extra information in the short reads to the medical unit by masking the encrypted short reads at the biobank. That is, specific parts of the genomic data for which the medical unit is not authorized or the patient prefers to keep secret are masked at the biobank, without revealing any information to the biobank.