Secure and efficient data spaces: implementation and evaluation

This thesis presents the design and implementation of SeEDS (Secure and Efficient Data Spaces), a standards-compliant Data Space solution aligned with the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) specifications for Data Spaces, utilizing the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) NGSI-LD API specifications. Data Spaces enable independent organizations to securely share and discover data while maintaining control, governance, and sovereignty, in contrast to centralized data platforms or proprietary CDNs. SeEDS builds upon the Secure Named Data Spaces (SNDS) project, which leveraged the Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture to provide data-centric communication with built-in cryptographic security and in-network caching. NDN’s content-based addressing and inherent data authentication make it a natural foundation for decentralized and self-sovereign Data Spaces. The SeEDS prototype extends SNDS into a complete NGSI-LD-compliant context broker, implementing the full API, including required data operations, content filtering, and optional temporal operations for historical data access. The system was significantly refactored to improve modularity, maintainability, and architectural clarity. This thesis documents and develops the SeEDS architecture, its internal modules, and the messaging patterns underlying each supported operation. The author contributed to the design and implementation of the full NGSI-LD API, a persistent storage subsystem, a resilience and failure-recovery mechanism, support for temporal queries, and a modular execution framework that enables efficient integration of new capabilities. Together, these contributions strengthen SeEDS as a robust, decentralized, and standards-based Data Space solution.