microsoft / microsoft/hve-core
feat(skills): add privacy-by-design skill and extended privacy assessment capabilities
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 1.5k
- Forks
- 301
- Avg merge
- 3d 3h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 92
Description
### Skill Name
privacy-by-design
### Programming Language
Other
### Purpose
Provide standalone privacy assessment knowledge bases that complement the existing privacy-standards skill. Most AI projects fail governance reviews due to privacy and data handling gaps, not just security vulnerabilities. The existing privacy-standards skill covers NIST PF, GDPR, CCPA, and OWASP Privacy Risks at a planning level, but lacks dedicated assessment skills for privacy-by-design principles, data minimisation, cross-border transfers, retention/disposal, and production data handling - areas where the security domain already has 7+ OWASP skills.
### Prerequisites
- Familiarity with GDPR, CCPA, and Australian Privacy Principles (APP)
- Access to project data inventory or processing records (for assessment mode)
- Existing `privacy-standards` skill loaded (for cross-referencing standards backbone)
### Requirements
### Value Proposition
| Without this skill | With this skill |
|---|---|
| Privacy Reviewer can only assess against NIST PF, GDPR, CCPA, OWASP Privacy Risks (the 4-standard backbone) | Privacy Reviewer can also assess against PbD principles, retention/disposal compliance, and APP |
| No structured checks for "is privacy the default?" or "is data disposed securely?" | Principle-by-principle structured findings with severity ratings |
| No APP (Australian) coverage | Cross-jurisdictional coverage (GDPR + CCPA + APP) |
**Design alignment (PRD NFR-007):** The Privacy Planner and Privacy Reviewer remain thin orchestration over skills; this skill adds domain content the agent consumes without requiring agent modification. The agent loads one more skill and applies the same assess→verify→report pipeline.
### Skill Behaviors
1. **Principle-based assessment**: When loaded by the Privacy Reviewer or Privacy Planner agent, enable structured assessment against all 7 PbD Foundation Principles, producing per-principle PASS/FAIL/PARTIAL findings with severity ratings.
2. **Retention and disposal verification**: Under Principle 05 (End-to-End Security — Full Lifecycle Protection), enable the agent to:
- Verify data retention periods are purpose-linked and documented
- Check disposal methods meet regulatory requirements (secure deletion, anonymisation, cryptographic erasure)
- Identify missing legal hold exception handling
- Flag indefinite retention without justification
3. **Standards-cited findings**: Every finding emitted by the consuming agent must carry a verbatim source citation (`gdpr_article`, `ccpa_section`, `app_principle`, or PbD principle ID) so compliance reviewers can trace it to authoritative law.
4. **Codebase signal detection**: Provide signal patterns (consent flows, data collection endpoints, storage configurations, retention policies, deletion endpoints) that the Codebase Profiler subagent uses to determine when this skill is applicable.
5. **Cross-jurisdictional mapping**: Map each principle to enforceable obligations across GDPR Art. 25, Australian Privacy Principles (APP 1, 3, 6, 8, 11), and CCPA/CPRA, enabling multi-jurisdiction assessment in a single pass.
6. **Complement existing privacy-standards**: Operate alongside (not replace) the `privacy-standards` skill. This skill adds PbD-specific assessment depth; `privacy-standards` continues to own data-flow reasoning, DPIA thresholds, and the four-standard backbone.
7. **Structured reference catalog**: Provide per-principle reference documents in a `references/` subdirectory following the `owasp-*` skill pattern, loadable on demand by the skill assessor subagent.
Contributor guide
Research direction
Start by reading the existing privacy-standards skill and the referenced owasp-* skill pattern. Add the privacy-by-design skill with on-demand references/ materials covering the seven PbD principles, retention and disposal, citations, codebase signals, and GDPR/CCPA/APP mapping. Done means the consuming agents can assess and report structured, severity-rated findings without agent changes.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- content, documentation
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100