A holistic list of privacy-preserving measures for system development life cycles

Personal information, as a key resource for companies, must be kept confidential as per the relevant data protection regulations. The same data protection regulations provide employees and customers the right to control their personal information. IT software is used to create, edit, store, and delete this personal information. However, cyber-attacks, security concerns, and data breaches relating to the personal information of customers and employees occur at an alarming rate, violating the confidentiality and privacy of said customers and employees. Privacy by Design (PbD) should be embedded into traditional Information Technology (IT) software development life cycles (SDLCs) to minimise data loss or breaches of personal information to aid in ensuring end-to-end privacy and confidentiality of personal data. Moreover, IT software must comply with data protection regulations to minimise data loss or breaches of personal information. A scoping literature review was conducted to gain insight into PbD and data protection regulations principles that are embedded into IT SDLC phases. Relevant articles were analysed using a qualitative approach. Privacy-preserving measures are identified that can be used to meet the PbD and data protection regulations requirements. The contribution of this paper is a holistic list of privacy-preserving measures that can be utilised to embed privacy considerations data protection regulations into the IT SDLC phases.