Privacy impact assessment and its importance in cloud computing.

8.a) Explain the concept of privacy impact assessment and its importance in cloud computing.

Answer:

Privacy and privacy impact assessment

Privacy is the right of an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization to keep information of personal nature or proprietary information from being disclosed.

Privacy is protected by law; sometimes laws limit privacy.

The main aspects of privacy are: the lack of user control, potential unauthorized secondary use, data proliferation, and dynamic provisioning.

Digital age has confronted legislators with significant challenges related to privacy as new threats have emerged. For example, personal information voluntarily shared, but stolen from sites granted access to it or misused can lead to identity theft.

Privacy concerns are different for the three cloud delivery models and also depend on the actual context.

Federal Trading Commission Rules

Web sites that collect personal identifying information from or about consumers online required complying with four fair information practices:

• Notice – provide consumers clear and conspicuous notice of their information practices, including what information they collect, how they collect it, how they use it, how they provide Choice, Access, and Security to consumers, whether they disclose the information collected to other entities, and whether other entities are collecting information through the site.

• Choice – offer consumers choices as to how their personal identifying information is used. Such choice would encompass both internal secondary uses (such as marketing back to consumers) and external secondary uses (such as disclosing data to other entities).

• Access – offer consumers reasonable access to the information a web site has collected about them, including a reasonable opportunity to review information and to correct inaccuracies or delete information.

• Security – take reasonable steps to protect the security of the information they collect from consumers.

Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA)

• The need for tools capable to identify privacy issues in information systems.
• There are no international standards for such a process, though different countries and organization require PIA reports.
• The centerpiece of a proposed PIA tool is based on a SaaS service.
• The users of the SaaS service providing access to the PIA tool must fill in a questionnaire.
• The system used a knowledge base (KB) created and maintained by domain experts.
• The system uses templates to generate additional questions necessary and to fill in the PIA report.
• An expert system infers which rules are satisfied by the facts in the database and provided by the users and executes the rule with the highest priority.

Importance of PIA in Cloud Computing:

1. Proactive Privacy Risk Identification: The resource discusses how tools like PIA help in identifying potential privacy risks, ensuring that privacy rules are embedded into systems from the beginning rather than needing painful changes later.
2. Compliance with Legal and Regulatory Requirements: It mentions the importance of PIA in helping organizations comply with privacy laws, such as the EU’s GDPR and other local data protection regulations. The tool also supports ensuring organizations meet privacy-related legal obligations.
3. Enhancing Transparency and Accountability: The resource highlights the need for transparency, which is key to building trust with users. A PIA is a documented process that helps organizations address privacy risks openly.
4. Building Trust with Users and Stakeholders: It emphasizes the trust factor, where organizations demonstrate to stakeholders (especially users) that they are safeguarding privacy, which is critical in cloud computing scenarios where data is often stored remotely.
5. Mitigating Privacy Risks and Protecting Sensitive Data: The resource refers to privacy risks, particularly in cloud environments, and how PIA can help mitigate these risks, especially with sensitive personal data.
6. Improved System Design and Data Handling: It suggests that PIA tools can improve system designs by ensuring privacy considerations are factored into systems early, preventing privacy risks after deployment.
7. Supporting Cross-Border Data Transfers: The resource acknowledges that PIA helps with privacy concerns related to cross-border data transfers, especially in cloud computing, where data can cross various legal jurisdictions.
8. Ethical Responsibility: The resource indicates that PIA promotes ethical handling of personal data, aligning the organization’s practices with privacy laws and user expectations.