ConfMod: A Simple Modeling of Confidentiality Requirements for Inter-Organizational Data Sharing

Exploiting data and information is known to be essential for tapping into unrealized (business) potential. In the context of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), concerns related to the sensitivity of data frequently hinder its sharing (across organizations). Despite this situation, universal approaches that account for and appropriately model the confidentiality needs of stakeholders are still missing. In this paper, we address this research gap by proposing ConfMod, a middleware that simplifies the fine-granular modeling of confidentiality requirements while striving for interoperability with other tools and standardization in the area. We evaluate ConfMod in a diverse set of twelve real-world use cases from industry and show its general feasibility. Hence, we are confident that the functionality and simplicity of ConfMod facilitate an important building block for the IIoT, which will fuel inter-organizational data sharing in the future.