GEO-Trust: Geo-aware security protocol for enabling cross-border trustable operations and data exchange in a global digital economy

Security and trustability in Internet is a baseline problem that continues arising as far as digitalization and data economy are taking place. It is well-known the value of data in the current digital age and social media economy. Consequences of this has produced a digitally-enabled data capture for different business domains and research. Nowadays, there is a lack of trustability for sharing data. In addition, legal regulations about data protection such as Swiss Data Protection Act (DPA), which is being updated and influenced by GDPR’s European Union principles are defining a more restrictive regulation about data usage, data geo-location and data sharing which are crucial to enable a data economy. Therefore, key challenges need to be addressed for guarantying a safe and regulations compliance flow of data (cross-borders). GEO-TRUST is developing techniques and algorithms that promote regulation of data exchange, trustability, consent management, reputation and security as contribution for the emerging Data Economy Ecosystem. In details, GEO-TRUST project proposes an innovative protocol called Proof of Offset (POO) to enable a higher control and limit data access by geo-location, accountability, data exposition minimization, data semantic annotation that guarantee cross-domain data re-use and higher awareness about data protection. This work presents the key concepts and initial results behind this technology being developed under the support of Hasler Foundation in Switzerland.