The Architecture of Privacy

Chapter 12. Enter the Privacy Engineer

Congratulations! If you’ve made it this far, you’ve hopefully designed and built a technology using some combination of the capabilities outlined in the previous chapters (and perhaps even a few innovations of your own). You slap a label on the box (actual or metaphorical), proudly declaring the technology to be “engineered for privacy.” Now you can turn your attention to other exciting matters, such as getting people to use it, confident that you have done your part to make privacy safe in an uncertain world.

Sadly, this is highly unlikely. Privacy is not something that can be fully addressed with a few architectural decisions made in the design phase alone. A commitment to privacy is an ongoing one, and as your technology grows and is adopted by more and more users in a variety of contexts, you will need to devote organizational resources to maintaining your commitment. Consequently, a key component of maintaining your privacy architecture is going to be an individual (or individuals) responsible for just that.

This requires a Privacy Engineer.

The Role of the Privacy Engineer

The concept of a Privacy Engineer is still very much in its infancy, so it may very well mean different things to different people. We define it broadly as the person (or persons) at your company responsible for ensuring your product is developed, built, and used in a manner consistent with your company’s privacy values. In short, if you have a vision for how your ...