Abstract
The need for collaboration and digital transformation is among the lessons the world has realized during the pandemic. This chapter argues that the strategy of the European Union to bring the concepts of sovereignty to the digital world is a crucial enabler to achieve these two goals. This strategy is being shaped by several community initiatives, laws, and projects that tackle different aspects of digital sovereignty. In this chapter, we survey the relevant literature to present an understanding of the emerging technology and highlight a research agenda based on challenges and gaps that we identify in different topics. Next, we discuss the requirements and challenges of identity and trust, sovereign data exchange, federated catalogues, and compliance as digital sovereignty pillars. This discussion is helpful to researchers in identifying relevant problems and practitioners in designing future-proof solutions. Finally, we illustrate the benefits of digital sovereignty through a use-case from the domain of collaborative security approaches.
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Notes
- 1.
Example would be the GDPR as this set of legal norms is binding for all EU-member states but includes principles different from similar laws in the US or China.
- 2.
Historically, these core values arise from a fundamental human right developed in Germany in the 1980s called “Informationelle Selbstbestimmung”, which roughly translates to informational self-determination.
- 3.
While different perspectives on sovereignty may further categorize it into different classes, e.g., technological sovereignty or data sovereignty; we discuss data sovereignty in this chapter.
- 4.
Tech companies are also acknowledging some of these aspects, e.g., Google (see https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/how-google-cloud-is-addressing-data-sovereignty-in-europe-2020).
- 5.
- 6.
GXFS represent the minimum technical requirements and services necessary to operate the federated Gaia-X Ecosystem of infrastructure and data.
- 7.
“While access control restricts access to specific resources (e.g., a Service or a file), data sovereignty is additionally supported with Data-Centric Usage Control” [21].
- 8.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of the following colleagues: Bithin Alangot, Subhajit Bandopadhyay, Isabelle Hang, Ali Hariri, Ioannis Krontiris, Athanasios Rizos, Tian Wenyuan, Teng Wu, Xuebing Zhou at Huawei’s Munich research center.
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Ibrahim, A., Dimitrakos, T. (2023). Towards Collaborative Security Approaches Based on the European Digital Sovereignty Ecosystem. In: Dimitrakos, T., Lopez, J., Martinelli, F. (eds) Collaborative Approaches for Cyber Security in Cyber-Physical Systems. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16088-2_6
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