Automated GDPR-compliance in requirements engineering

In the last lustrum, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) profoundly impacted data processing organizations as compliance with this Regulation became obligatory. Due to resource poverty, complying with the GDPR can be a challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises. In this research, we consider GDPR-compliance as a high-level goal in software development that should be addressed at the outset of software development, that is, during requirements engineering (RE). Moreover, we argue that natural language processing (NLP) can be utilized to automate this process. Therefore, this Ph.D. research aims to address the challenge organizations face by developing an NLP-based automated approach towards GDPR-compliance in RE. In particular, we aim to develop an approach to assess whether a set of system requirements complies with the GDPR to achieve data protection by design and by default, thus providing organizations with an efficient and effective solution to ensure GDPR-compliance. This paper presents our research questions and their relevance, the adopted research method, preliminary results, and the current state of our research.

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Open