Maintaining Control over Distributed Data Through a Data Sovereignty Model

In today’s global and collaborative virtual product development, massive amounts of data are shared and exchanged between a large number of participants. To store continuous increasing amounts of data, enterprises often outsource their storage to cloud providers. Due to economic factors, cloud providers often locate their servers (on which the data is stored) in other countries than they are located in themselves. However, the location where data is physically stored plays a critical role since it determines which jurisdiction it falls under and, consequently, which government can legally access the data without even needing permission. In contrast to that, most participants of the design process are lacking essential knowledge and transparency about where their data is located (after the distribution or storage in a cloud) and what consequences this has on their data privacy. Approaching this problem, we identified the necessity of transparent and secure data sharing and storing in virtual product development in order to ensure data owners sovereignty over their data. Therefore, we developed a concept which: 1) generates an overview about the actual location of distributed and stored design data and 2) provides data owners with the ability to maintain control over their data by regulating who can potentially access it. The concept proposes a novel data sovereignty model which consists of a data sovereignty graph and usage licenses (sovereignty criteria). To validate the concept, a prototypical implementation was conducted and evaluated. We came to the conclusion that the presented concept can be used effectively to create transparency, trust, and security of transferred data in the product development supply chain.