Strengthening Data Sovereignty Through Digital Watermarking in Data Spaces

Data spaces have emerged as a paradigm for maintaining data sovereignty and interoperability in data sharing among various stakeholders. There is an increasing interest and progress in research and practice whereby currently used implementations only enable data sovereignty within their trusted environments. Digital watermarking, a key concept in the research domain of information hiding, addresses similar principles of securing data ownership, while its integration within data spaces remains unexplored. This paper combines both domains by presenting the first integrated digital watermarking solution in a data space. Guided by design science research, we designed and developed two extensions for the connector of the Eclipse Dataspace Components in the Java programming language to validate the solution's practicality. The resulting artifact shows a robust data sovereignty enhancement, paving the way for more protection and control in future data spaces.