D’accord - Adaptive privacy cockpits in digital ecosystems.

© Fraunhofer IESE

Digital platforms and ecosystems are becoming increasingly popular. The COVID 19 pandemic and the shift of many business models to the Internet have further intensified this trend, and even smaller companies (SMEs) are offering more and more digital services. However, not as many as there could be, because data protection is perceived by many companies as a digital brake on innovation. There is a lack of guidelines, tools and solutions to implement the legal requirements, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, simply and effectively. Practicable data protection concepts are therefore more important than ever for companies.

The complexity of implementing data protection increases the more companies are involved and the more intensively they exchange personal data. In the case of online orders, for example, retailers often pass on customer and order data to changing financial and transport service providers, who in turn transfer this data to subcontractors. Even here, it is almost impossible for those affected to obtain a comprehensive picture of how their data is actually used.

The D'accord project is developing new concepts and tools that will enable companies to achieve a higher level of legal certainty in the processing of personal data, both internally and across companies. At the center is a so-called data protection cockpit. A data protection cockpit offers companies the opportunity to implement legally compliant data protection completely, effectively and in a user-centric manner with little effort. On the one hand, it acts as a central point of contact where data subjects can obtain information about the use of their personal data, thus creating greater transparency. On the other hand, data subjects can use the data protection cockpit to influence the use of their personal data and exercise their data subject rights, for example, to have their data corrected or "forgotten."

The aim of the project is to provide empirically validated models, suitable concepts and technologies for such cockpits in the form of a tool collection. This will enable companies that want to benefit from offering digital services or participation in digital systems to create and implement data protection cockpits for their context. In this way, even smaller companies are able to present data privacy policies and data flows more transparently and implement data subjects' rights in a legally compliant manner. In this way, the results of the D'accord project help to remove data protection as a hurdle in the digitization of the German economy.

In its sub-project "Sensitization and empowerment of participants in digital ecosystems in dealing with data privacy cockpits", ITA is analyzing which economic and social or non-monetary added values and potential risks can arise from the use of a data privacy cockpit in and for companies or digital ecosystems. In addition, there is a particular focus on users and their awareness of the value of their personal data. To this end, innovative teaching-learning formats will be developed and tested as part of the project.

Projektwebsite: www.daccord-projekt.de
Projektsteckbrief: https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/daccord