Focus Session: Cybersecurity and Digital Libraries infrastrucures
Venice, Italy (hybrid event) • September 7–9, 2026
Digital Libraries have become critical gateways to scientific and cultural information, but their growing centrality and online exposure make them increasingly attractive targets for cyberattacks and abusive automated traffic. Ensuring availability, confidentiality, integrity and regulatory compliance now requires treating cybersecurity as an integral part of both digital preservation and infrastructure design, rather than as an add‑on. This workshop will explore cybersecurity in Digital Library and Repositories infrastructures from the perspective of a service provider operating large‑scale DSpace, DSpace‑CRIS and DSpace‑GLAM installations in the cloud. Participants will be introduced to multi‑layer security architectures on AWS, including network isolation, WAF/Shield‑based protection against DDoS and aggressive crawlers. The workshop will also address organizational aspects such as ISO 27001‑aligned Information Security Management Systems, incident management in the NIS2/GDPR landscape, and shared responsibilities between institutions and hosting providers. Building on recent experiences with AI bots and large‑scale crawlers impacting DSpace 7+ repositories, we will examine performance and security challenges, mitigation tactics (CDN, caching, rate‑limiting) and the transition toward containerized, Kubernetes‑based deployments that support horizontal scaling and high availability. Finally, we will open a discussion on emerging directions, including the use of NLP and ML to detect and manage sensitive data in digital collections, positioning cybersecurity as a core enabler for sustainable, open and trustworthy Digital Libraries and Repositories.
› Digital Libraries in the cybersecurity landscape
› Governance and standards
› Security architecture for DSpace‑based hosted services
› Bots, AI crawlers, performance and security
› Cloud‑native, scalable repositories
› Application‑level security in DSpace and extensions
› Emerging directions: AI for security and privacy in DLs
Speakers
Claudio Cortese 4Science s.p.a
Supported by
