Institute of Computer Science Alumnus Won the Swedbank Thesis Award

Institute of Computer Science Cyber Security alumnus Ilhan Çelebi won the Swedbank employees' technical thesis award for his work on privacy modelling language for GDPR compliance.

Ilhan Çelebi found that GDPR compliance and privacy components need to be considered from the early stages of the development process and software engineers should analyse not only the system but also its environment. Although the GDPR’s accountability principle requires organizations to show compliance with the principles of the GDPR, there were not any practical social modelling languages supply the demand driven by industrial and commercial needs. 

This is a serious issue for public institutions and private sector in the EU because GDPR brings very serious charges for data controllers and data processors, therefore organizations do not feel themselves ready to face with those regulations and software engineers have a lack of methods for capturing change requests of the information systems. 

In his paper, Ilhan Çelebi applies a structured privacy modelling language that is called as PESTOS which has a goal-oriented solution domain that aims to bring a high compatibility with GDPR by covering Privacy by Design strategies for assessing proper privacy-enhancing technologies(PETs) in a respect of the goal-actor-rule perspective. A survey conducted by identity & security experts validates that proposed mode has a sufficient level of correctness, completeness, productivity and ease of use in compliance with the GDPR.

Swedbank valued the thesis’ actuality, originality and possibility for its practical use in the bank. Ilhan Çelebi’s work was selected from 14 theses as the best technical thesis and he was awarded with a financial prize.

Ilhan Çelebi’s these can be found here (supervised by Raimundas Matulevičius, Associate Professor in Software Systems).

Further information:

Mattias Jõesaar
Marketing and Communication Specialist
Institute of Computer Science
University of Tartu
J. Liivi 2-217
+372 737 5468
+372 513 6709