Towards a cybersecurity-oriented research agenda for digital sovereignty

The term "digital sovereignty" has emerged as a means of promoting the notion of leadership and strategic autonomy in the digital field. Digital sovereignty refers to a nation’s or a group of nations’ ability to act independently in the digital world and should be understood as encompassing both protective mechanisms and offensive tools that drive digital innovation. This perspective highlights the intrinsic connection between digital sovereignty and cybersecurity. Even though policy, political and legislative aspects of digital sovereignty are in the forefront of public discourse and the research literature on these issues is increasing, cybersecurity-oriented research for digital sovereignty is only starting. In this paper we discuss the relationship between selected fields of research in cybersecurity, such as Digital Trust, Privacy, Cyber Resilience, Digital Supply Chain Security on one hand, and Digital Sovereignty on the other, in an attempt to outline priority themes and topics of a possible cybersecurity-oriented research and innovation agenda for digital sovereignty.