Semantics-based Privacy by Design for Internet of Things Applications

TL;DR

This paper presents the development of the PARROT ontology, a semantic web-based tool designed to assist software engineers in applying Privacy by Design principles in IoT system development.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ontology that models PbD knowledge and supports privacy-related queries for IoT applications, validated through expert evaluation and user studies.

Findings

PARROT ontology can answer up to 58% of privacy questions.

The ontology was developed using 81 curated Competency Questions.

Evaluation showed effective support for privacy design questions.

Abstract

As Internet of Things (IoT) technologies become more widespread in everyday life, privacy issues are becoming more prominent. The aim of this research is to develop a personal assistant that can answer software engineers' questions about Privacy by Design (PbD) practices during the design phase of IoT system development. Semantic web technologies are used to model the knowledge underlying PbD measurements, their intersections with privacy patterns, IoT system requirements and the privacy patterns that should be applied across IoT systems. This is achieved through the development of the PARROT ontology, developed through a set of representative IoT use cases relevant for software developers. This was supported by gathering Competency Questions (CQs) through a series of workshops, resulting in 81 curated CQs. These CQs were then recorded as SPARQL queries, and the developed ontology was evaluated using the Common Pitfalls model with the help of the Prot\'eg\'e HermiT Reasoner and the Ontology Pitfall Scanner (OOPS!), as well as evaluation by external experts. The ontology was assessed within a user study that identified that the PARROT ontology can answer up to 58\% of privacy-related questions from software engineers.