Requirements Engineering Key to Unlocking Privacy Tech Adoption

A new academic paper from Oleksandr Kosenkov and colleagues argues that Requirements Engineering (RE) can systematically overcome long-standing barriers to deploying Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) in software systems. Accepted at the 34th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2026), the study notes that despite substantial investment from regulators and tech giants like Google and Microsoft, PET adoption remains limited due to technical complexity and insufficient practitioner training. The authors adopt an industrial challenge perspective, analyzing hurdles across three stakeholder groups—PET developers, integrators, and adopters—and three disciplinary lenses: engineering, business, and law.

By applying RE as a coordinating framework, the paper shows how explicit specification of engineering concerns (e.g., software architecture impact), business considerations (e.g., cost-benefit trade-offs), and legal requirements (e.g., regulatory compliance) can align stakeholders. Neglecting any viewpoint increases the risk of implementation failure. The work positions RE as a practical bridge between privacy theory and real-world deployment, potentially accelerating the adoption of tools like differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and federated learning in production systems.