Potential and Threats Related to Open Geospatial Data in the Uncertain Geopolitical Environment

2024-11-08

Dr. Henrikki Tenkanen

During the last few decades, there has been increasing interest in open geospatial data, especially with regard to the public sector. Open data promotes transparency in society, and data availability creates significant additional value. There are also potential threats associated with open data. For example, threats to society and national security related to open data have been given a lot more attention than before in many countries, including Finland. In this presentation, we will present the key results of a project that investigated potential threats related to open data and society in Finland based on group interviews with several security experts in Finland. Based on the interviews, we created a number of threat scenarios that were further refined and discussed with experts. We recognized a large number of different potential malicious actors, ranging from hostile nations to individual criminals. The threats these actors might cause are varied, and for many, the best ways to mitigate the threat are not, in fact, related to open data themselves. In addition, changes to open datasets can have significant side effects that also need to be taken into account when considering how to manage the potential threats. Our study concludes that decisions to open new datasets or to modify already existing ones need to be made carefully, and threat and risk assessment must always be weighed against the benefits of publishing the data and the drawbacks of leaving the data unpublished.