# Protecting Sensitive Data in the Information Age: State of the Art and Future Prospects
## 4 Assessment of the State of Privacy Mechanisms for Smart Services  
After discussing the opportunities and privacy threats of smart services in the most relevant application domains in Section 2 and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of state-of-the-art privacy technologies for these types of smart services in Section 3, we now assess whether the available privacy measures are adequate. To this end, we apply a systematic analysis technique adapted from strategic planning. The so-called _SWOT analysis_ is originally used to determine the market position and strategy development of companies. SWOT stands for _strengths_, _weaknesses_, _opportunities_, and _threats_. In this process, internal and external factors are first identified and then juxtaposed with helpful and harmful aspects of a product or a company strategy. From the four resulting intersections (internal factors vs. helpful aspects, internal factors vs. harmful aspects, external factors vs. helpful aspects, and external factors vs. harmful aspects), strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats can be derived. Therefore, SWOT analysis is an important foundation for strategic audits, as it enables a systematic market and environmental assessment [169]. In addition to the original focus on companies, the SWOT analysis is meanwhile used in adapted form in many other domains, for instance, in the education sector when new teaching methods are to be introduced or in the health sector to determine risk factors for patients [170]. For our assessment of the state of privacy mechanisms for smart services, we also use an approach based on the SWOT analysis. We develop an individual SWOT matrix for each of the seven application scenarios. Unlike in the classic SWOT analysis, however, we do not compare internal and external factors with helpful and harmful aspects but rather the strengths and weaknesses of the privacy mechanisms with the opportunities and privacy threats present in the respective application scenarios. In this way, we obtain a good understanding of the extent to which state-of-the-art privacy measures are suitable for the deployment in the application scenarios and which open questions still need to be resolved in this context. The result of our analysis is presented in Figure 16.  
Across all application scenarios, it can be observed that there is an appropriate privacy technique for each privacy threat. It can also be noted that the privacy techniques are capable of operating in a target-oriented manner. That is, when protecting sensitive data, it is also ensured that the general utility of the base data is not unnecessarily impaired. This is a fundamental requirement, as otherwise, the use of smart services would be severely disrupted or outright prevented, rendering the privacy techniques worthless. So, in principle, this is a highly promising result, as there are tailored techniques for all types of data and forms of processing. However, our analysis also reveals inherent privacy techniques. Figure 16: Results of our SWOT Analysis Broken Down by the Respective Application Scenario. problems with state-of-the-art privacy technologies for smart services that need to be addressed in order to enable effective data protection by design. Problems arise in particular regarding the selection and configuration of the privacy techniques, since this requires comprehensive technical and domain knowledge, which a normal user does not possess. As a result, the privacy measures are often too restrictive in terms of impairing the quality of the smart service and at the same time not effective enough in terms of protecting all sensitive data. Moreover, each privacy technology is always designed for a specific use case. Comprehensive privacy protection therefore requires the integration of many heterogeneous approaches, which leads to further adjustment problems.