The Good, the Bad, and the (Un)Usable: A Rapid Literature Review on Privacy as Code

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ferreyra, Nicolás E. Díaz, Khelifi, Sirine, Arachchilage, Nalin, Scandariato, Riccardo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Ferreyra, Nicolás E. Díaz
Khelifi, Sirine
Arachchilage, Nalin
Scandariato, Riccardo
author_facet Ferreyra, Nicolás E. Díaz
Khelifi, Sirine
Arachchilage, Nalin
Scandariato, Riccardo
contents Privacy and security are central to the design of information systems endowed with sound data protection and cyber resilience capabilities. Still, developers often struggle to incorporate these properties into software projects as they either lack proper cybersecurity training or do not consider them a priority. Prior work has tried to support privacy and security engineering activities through threat modeling methods for scrutinizing flaws in system architectures. Moreover, several techniques for the automatic identification of vulnerabilities and the generation of secure code implementations have also been proposed in the current literature. Conversely, such as-code approaches seem under-investigated in the privacy domain, with little work elaborating on (i) the automatic detection of privacy properties in source code or (ii) the generation of privacy-friendly code. In this work, we seek to characterize the current research landscape of Privacy as Code (PaC) methods and tools by conducting a rapid literature review. Our results suggest that PaC research is in its infancy, especially regarding the performance evaluation and usability assessment of the existing approaches. Based on these findings, we outline and discuss prospective research directions concerning empirical studies with software practitioners, the curation of benchmark datasets, and the role of generative AI technologies.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_16667
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
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spellingShingle The Good, the Bad, and the (Un)Usable: A Rapid Literature Review on Privacy as Code
Ferreyra, Nicolás E. Díaz
Khelifi, Sirine
Arachchilage, Nalin
Scandariato, Riccardo
Software Engineering
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Privacy and security are central to the design of information systems endowed with sound data protection and cyber resilience capabilities. Still, developers often struggle to incorporate these properties into software projects as they either lack proper cybersecurity training or do not consider them a priority. Prior work has tried to support privacy and security engineering activities through threat modeling methods for scrutinizing flaws in system architectures. Moreover, several techniques for the automatic identification of vulnerabilities and the generation of secure code implementations have also been proposed in the current literature. Conversely, such as-code approaches seem under-investigated in the privacy domain, with little work elaborating on (i) the automatic detection of privacy properties in source code or (ii) the generation of privacy-friendly code. In this work, we seek to characterize the current research landscape of Privacy as Code (PaC) methods and tools by conducting a rapid literature review. Our results suggest that PaC research is in its infancy, especially regarding the performance evaluation and usability assessment of the existing approaches. Based on these findings, we outline and discuss prospective research directions concerning empirical studies with software practitioners, the curation of benchmark datasets, and the role of generative AI technologies.
title The Good, the Bad, and the (Un)Usable: A Rapid Literature Review on Privacy as Code
topic Software Engineering
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.16667