Security and Privacy in Companies: State-of-the-art and Qualitative Analysis

Privacy and security are relevant topics in both -- research and practice. Although they are often used together, implicitly assuming that they represent the same concept, they actually represent different concepts that are closely related. First, this paper presents a way to differentiate between these two topics from a conceptual point of view. Furthermore, it depicts some commonly accepted privacy regulations that exist in the OECD, EU and US. Second, we show how privacy and security are defined and implemented in practice, based on three interviews, conducted in different Austrian companies. The interviews picture the specific situation in the companies. Similarities and differences between the three interviews as well as between the interviews as a whole and the conceptual considerations were found and are described. To explain the maturity of these companies in terms of their understanding of privacy and security, we analyzed and visualized the interviews.