In the wake of continual and aggressive US trade actions, it has become increasingly common for European consumers to look for European options. Digital services are no exception. However, unlike most products, digital consumers can avoid companies altogether and self-host their own digital services. Self-hosting is nothing new, the blogs of the 1990s and early 2000s certainly showcase this. However, in an age of social media and ever-increasing digital connections, self-hosting has become an entirely different beast, requiring the introduction of federated services.
With new markets to support a new trend of self-hosting, it has become easier than ever for novice users to self host their own federated services. This introduces many new cyber security concerns that are not even being discussed, let alone tackled. When there is no service provider, who is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the data hosted? With federation, data is stored across multiple (likely self hosted) instances, are self-hosters responsible for complying with GDPR regulations to delete data? Are we ready for an increasing number of novice self-hosters exposing their home networks to the wider internet? All these questions and more will be discussed in a deep dive into federated self-hosted digital services.
