Enhancing Practical Engagement with Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)

May 22, 2025

The growing interest in privacy has led to the development of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to address the well-known gap between data anonymity and utility. Despite the effectiveness of PETs, selecting and integrating them into software engineering practices remains challenging. This difficulty largely stems from a lack of resources that guide software engineers on how to practically implement PETs. This thesis introduces a series of open-source educational resources in the form of practical laboratory guides designed to teach developers how to use and integrate PETs, thereby enhancing the privacy-by-design approach in software development. An innovative aspect of our approach is the structured instructional design process combined with an appropriate evaluation methodology that includes empirical evaluations, tests, challenge-based assessments, and user experience surveys. Our research demonstrates significant improvements in the knowledge and skills of software engineers regarding the application of PETs. Additionally, we validated the utility and usability of our materials. Overall, this work provides a scalable and transferable model for embedding privacy-preserving techniques into software engineering processes.

Authors in the community:

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  B

  Bruno Filipe Leitão Catarino da Silva Paulo

  ist196730

Supervisors of this institution:

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  P

  Paulo Jorge Fernandes Carreira

  ist24950

electrical-engineering-electronic-engineering-information-engineering - Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

eng - English

Instituto Superior Técnico