A Privacy Impact Assessment Tool for Cloud Computing

In this paper, we present a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) decision support tool, that can be integrated - within a cloud environment. Privacy is an important issue in cloud computing, both in terms of legal compliance, security, and user trust. A PIA is a systematic process for evaluating the possible effects that a particular activity or proposal may have on an individuals privacy. It focuses on understanding the system, initiative or scheme, identifying and mitigating adverse privacy impacts, and informing decision makers in deciding whether the project should proceed and in what form. The PIA should be properly distinguished from other business processes such as privacy issue analysis, privacy audits, as these are applied to existing systems to ensure their continuing conformity with internal rules and external requirements.