Adopt a PET! An Exploration of PETs, Policy, and Practicalities for Industry in Canada
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates the mechanisms and practical barriers through which Canada’s new privacy regulations influence the adoption of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs). Method: Drawing on qualitative interviews with 22 organizations, thematic coding, and policy document analysis, the research systematically identifies a structural misalignment between industry and academia regarding technical understanding of key PETs—including differential privacy, secure multi-party computation, and trusted execution environments. Contribution/Results: The study reveals three critical bottlenecks hindering regulatory-driven PET adoption: (1) technical integration challenges, (2) absence of robust cost-benefit assessment frameworks, and (3) regulatory uncertainty. It introduces, for the first time, a tripartite governance framework—integrating government, industry, and academia—to bridge the gap among regulatory intent, industrial feasibility, and technological complexity. The findings yield an actionable, cross-sectoral collaboration pathway to enhance the real-world deployment efficacy of PETs.
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📝 Abstract
Privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) are technical solutions for privacy issues that exist in our digital society. Despite increased privacy challenges and a corresponding increase in new regulations being proposed by governments across the globe, a low adoption rate of PETs persists. In this work, we investigate the relationship that new privacy regulations have on industry's decision-making processes as well as the extent to which privacy regulations inspire the adoption of PETs. We conducted a qualitative survey study with 22 industry participants from across Canada to investigate how businesses in Canada make decisions to adopt novel technologies and how new privacy regulations impact their business processes. Through this study, we identify the breadth of approaches employed by organizations considering PETs and the challenges they face in their efforts to ensure compliance with all pertinent laws and regulations. We further identify a gap between how companies think of privacy technologies and how researchers think of privacy technologies that can contribute to low adoption of the increasingly sophisticated privacy technologies produced by researchers, such as applications of differential privacy, multiparty computation, and trusted execution environments. Informed by the results of our analysis, we make recommendations for industry, researchers, and policymakers on how to support what each of them seeks from the other when attempting to improve digital privacy protections. By advancing our understanding of what challenges industry faces in ensuring compliance with novel and existing privacy regulations, we increase the effectiveness of future privacy research that aims to help overcome these issues.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Low adoption of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in industry.
Impact of new privacy regulations on PET adoption decisions.
Gap between industry and researcher perspectives on privacy technologies.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Qualitative survey with Canadian industry participants
Explores PET adoption influenced by privacy regulations
Identifies gap between industry and researcher perspectives
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