Consideration for Information Security Issues in Geospatial Information Services of Local Governments

Geographic Information System (GIS) is one of the important elements of the IT infrastructure of local governments. In recent years, in the consequence of development of Web-based GIS technology, the definition of GIS has been changing to “Geospatial Information Service”. For a local government, the geospatial information service is becoming an important IT system in the field of information service or in the field of information disclosure for its residents. Since all of the governmental geospatial information is public property, it should not only be utilized but be protected. However, there is no standard or guideline for the information security regarding the geospatial information service in Japan. Therefore, a study from the stance of IT security is required in order to secure the geospatial information service and to protect the geospatial information as public property. ISO/IEC TR 13335 GMITS that is one of ISO standards for the IT security management is a useful framework for discussing regarding IT security policy of an information service. This paper aims to consider regarding IT security requirements for the geospatial information service and analyze the specific threats to them according to the framework of GMITS. Based on the threat analysis, a set of safeguards for the baseline security of the geospatial information service is selected. In addition, technical issues of the safeguards to clarify the feasibility of them are discussed.