Privacy, security, legal and technology acceptance requirements for a GDPR compliance platform.

GDPR entered into force in May 2018 for enhancing user data protection. Even though GDPR leads towards a radical change with many advantages for the data subjects it turned out to be a significant challenge. Organizations need to make long and complex changes for the personal data processing activities to become GDPR compliant. Citizens as data subjects are empowered with new rights, which however they need to become aware of and understand. Finally, the role of data protection authorities changes as well as their expectations from organizations. GDPR compliance being a challenging matter for the relevant stakeholders calls for a software platform that can support their needs. The aim of the Data govErnance For supportiNg gDpr (DEFeND) EU Project is to deliver such a platform. To succeed, the platform needs to satisfy legal and privacy requirements, be effective in supporting organizations in GDPR compliance, and provide functionalities that data controllers request for supporting GDPR compliance. Further, it needs to satisfy acceptance requirements, for assuring that its users will embrace and use the platform. In this paper, we describe the process, within the DEFeND EU Project, for eliciting and analyzing requirements for such a complex platform, by involving stakeholders from the banking, energy, health and public administration sectors, and using advanced frameworks for privacy requirements and acceptance requirements. The paper also contributes by providing elicited privacy and acceptance requirements concerning a holistic platform for supporting GDPR compliance

Privacy, security, legal and technology acceptance elicited and consolidated requirements for a GDPR compliance platform

Purpose– General data protection regulation (GDPR) entered into force in May 2018 for enhancing personal data protection. Even though GDPR leads toward many advantages for the data subjects it turned out to be a significant challenge. Organizations need to implement long and complex changes to become GDPR compliant. Data subjects are empowered with new rights, which, however, they need to become aware of. GDPR compliance is a challenging matter for the relevant stakeholders calls for a software platform that can support their needs. The aim of data governance for supporting GDPR (DEFeND) EU project is to deliver such a platform. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process, within the DEFeND EU project, for eliciting and analyzing requirements for such a complex platform. Design/methodology/approach– The platform needs to satisfy legal and privacy requirements and provide functionalities that data controllers request for supporting GDPR compliance. Further, it needs to satisfy acceptance requirements, for assuring that its users will embrace and use the platform. In this paper, the authors describe the methodology for eliciting and analyzing requirements for such a complex platform, by analyzing data attained by stakeholders from different sectors. Findings– The findings provide the process for the DEFeND platform requirements’elicitation and an indicative sample of those. The authors also describe the implementation of a secondary process for consolidating the elicited requirements into a consistent set of platform requirements. Practical implications– The proposed software engineering methodology and data collection tools(i.e. questionnaires) are expected to have a significant impact for software engineers in academia and industry. Social implications– It is reported repeatedly that data controllers face difficulties in complying with theGDPR. The study aims to offer mechanisms and tools that can assist organizations to comply with the GDPR,thus, offering a significant boost toward the European personal data protection objectives. Originality/value– This is the first paper, according to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to provide software requirements for a GDPR compliance platform, including multiple perspectives

Service Level Agreement-based GDPR Compliance and Security assurance in (multi)Cloud-based systems

Compliance with the new European General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and security assurance are currently two major challenges of Cloud-based systems. GDPR compliance implies both privacy and security mechanisms definition, enforcement and control, including evidence collection. This paper presents a novel DevOps framework aimed at supporting Cloud consumers in designing, deploying and operating (multi)Cloud systems that include the necessary privacy and security controls for ensuring transparency to end-users, third parties in service provision (if any) and law enforcement authorities. The framework relies on the risk-driven specification at design time of privacy and security level objectives in the system Service Level Agreement (SLA) and in their continuous monitoring and enforcement at runtime.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644429 and No 780351, MUSA project and ENACT project, respectively. We would also like to acknowledge all the members of the MUSA Consortium and ENACT Consortium for their valuable help

DEFeND architecture: a privacy by design platform for GDPR compliance.

The advent of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes organizations to cope with radical changes concerning user data protection paradigms. GDPR, by promoting a Privacy by Design approach, obliges organizations to drastically change their methods regarding user data acquisition, management, processing, as well as data breaches monitoring, notification and preparation of prevention plans. This enforces data subjects (e.g., citizens, customers) rights by enabling them to have more information regarding usage of their data, and to take decisions (e.g., revoking usage permissions). Moreover, organizations are required to trace precisely their activities on user data, enabling authorities to monitor and sanction more easily. Indeed, since GDPR has been introduced, authorities have heavily sanctioned companies found as not GDPR compliant. GDPR is difficult to apply also for its length, complexity, covering many aspects, and not providing details concerning technical and organizational security measures to apply. This calls for tools and methods able to support organizations in achieving GDPR compliance. From the industry and the literature, there are many tools and prototypes fulfilling specific/isolated GDPR aspects, however there is not a comprehensive platform able to support organizations in being compliant regarding all GDPR requirements. In this paper, we propose the design of an architecture for such a platform, able to reuse and integrate peculiarities of those heterogeneous tools, and to support organizations in achieving GDPR compliance. We describe the architecture, designed within the DEFeND EU project, and discuss challenges and preliminary benefits in applying it to the healthcare and energy domains

After Over-Privileged Permissions: Using Technology and Design to Create Legal Compliance

Consumers in the mobile ecosystem can putatively protect their privacy with the use of application permissions. However, this requires the mobile device owners to understand permissions and their privacy implications. Yet, few consumers appreciate the nature of permissions within the mobile ecosystem, often failing to appreciate the privacy permissions that are altered when updating an app. Even more concerning is the lack of understanding of the wide use of third-party libraries, most which are installed with automatic permissions, that is permissions that must be granted to allow the application to function appropriately. Unsurprisingly, many of these third-party permissions violate consumers’ privacy expectations and thereby, become “over-privileged” to the user. Consequently, an obscurity of privacy expectations between what is practiced by the private sector and what is deemed appropriate by the public sector is exhibited. Despite the growing attention given to privacy in the mobile ecosystem, legal literature has largely ignored the implications of mobile permissions. This article seeks to address this omission by analyzing the impacts of mobile permissions and the privacy harms experienced by consumers of mobile applications. The authors call for the review of industry self-regulation and the overreliance upon simple notice and consent. Instead, the authors set out a plan for greater attention to be paid to socio-technical solutions, focusing on better privacy protections and technology embedded within the automatic permission-based application ecosystem

PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION RULES! GUIDELINES FOR PRIVACY-FRIENDLY SMART ENERGY SERVICES

Privacy-friendly processing of personal data is proving to be increasingly challenging in today’s energy systems as the amount of data grows. Smart energy services provide value creation and co-creation by processing sensible user data collected from smart meters, smart home devices, storage systems, and renewable energy plants. To address this challenge, we analyze key topics and develop design requirements and design principles for privacy-friendly personal data processing in smart energy services. We identify these key topics through expert interviews, text-mining, and topic modelling techniques based on 149 publications. Following this, we derive our design requirements and principles and evaluate these with experts and an applicability check with three real-world smart energy services. Based on our results and findings, we establish a further research agenda consisting of five specific research directions

Evaluating a Reference Architecture for Privacy Level Agreement\u27s Management

With the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation and the compliance to specific privacyand security-related principles, the adoption of Privacy by Design and Security by Design principles can be considered as a legal obligation for all organisations keeping EU citizens’ personal data. A formal way to support Data Controllers towards their compliance to the new regulation could be a Privacy Level Agreement (PLA), a mutual agreement of the privacy settings between a Data Controller and a Data Subject, that supports privacy management, by analysing privacy threats, vulnerabilities and Information Systems’ trust relationships. However, the concept of PLA has only been proposed on a theoretical level. In this paper, we propose a novel reference architecture to enable PLA management in practice, and we report on the application and evaluation of PLA management within the context of real-life case studies from two different domains, the public administration and the healthcare, where sensitive data is kept. The results are rather positive, indicating that the adoption of such an agreement promotes the transparency of an organisation while enhances data subjects’ trust