The unresolved need for dependable guarantees on security, sovereignty, and trust in data ecosystems

Abstract

Data ecosystems emerged as a new paradigm to facilitate the automated and massive exchange of data from heterogeneous information sources between different stakeholders. However, the corresponding benefits come with unforeseen risks as sensitive information is potentially exposed, questioning data ecosystem reliability. Consequently, data security is of utmost importance and, thus, a central requirement for successfully realizing data ecosystems. Academia has recognized this requirement, and current initiatives foster sovereign participation via a federated infrastructure where participants retain local control over what data they offer to whom. However, recent proposals place significant trust in remote infrastructure by implementing organizational security measures such as certification processes before the admission of a participant. At the same time, the data sensitivity incentivizes participants to bypass the organizational security measures to maximize their benefit. This issue significantly weakens security, sovereignty, and trust guarantees and highlights that organizational security measures are insufficient in this context. In this paper, we argue that data ecosystems must be extended with technical means to (re)establish dependable guarantees. We underpin this need with three representative use cases for data ecosystems, which cover personal, economic, and governmental data, and systematically map the lack of dependable guarantees in related work. To this end, we identify three enablers of dependable guarantees, namely trusted remote policy enforcement, verifiable data tracking, and integration of resource-constrained participants. These enablers are critical for securely implementing data ecosystems in data-sensitive contexts.