IWPE 2015 - International Workshop on Privacy Engineering

Ongoing news reports regarding global surveillance programs, massive personal data breaches that result in organizational liabilities, and notorious examples of personal tragedies due to privacy violations have intensified societal demands for privacy-friendly systems. In response, current legislative and standardization processes worldwide aim to strengthen individual’s privacy by introducing legal and organizational frameworks that personal data collectors and processors must follow.
However, in practice, these initiatives alone are not enough to guarantee that organizations and software developers will adopt appropriate privacy engineering techniques in their daily practices, and that the systems they develop using such techniques will comply with legal frameworks and fulfill users’ privacy requirements. It is evident that research is needed in developing techniques that can aid the translation of legal and normative concepts, and user expectations into systems requirements, as well as methods that can support organizations and engineers in developing (socio-) technical systems that address these requirements.
In this context, privacy engineering research is emerging as an important topic. Engineers are increasingly expected to build and maintain privacy-preserving and data-protection compliant systems in different ICT domains such a health, energy, transportation, social computing, law enforcement, public services; based on different infrastructures such as cloud, grid, or mobile computing. While there is a consensus on the benefits of an engineering approach to privacy, concrete proposals for processes, models, methodologies, techniques and tools that support engineers and organizations in this endeavor are few and in need of immediate attention.
To cover this gap, the topics of the International Workshop on Privacy Engineering (IWPE'15) focus on all the aspects surrounding privacy engineering, ranging from its theoretical foundations, engineering approaches, and support infrastructures, to its application and case studies.