The GSE Launches Country-Level Data Sharing Controls

Scams operate across jurisdictions. The fight against scams requires global data sharing and coordination.

Today, the GSE has rolled out a new feature introducing country-level data sharing controls for all our users. This release is a key step towards making the GSE a truly global data sharing platform to fight scams.

What’s new

The release is designed to bring in partners from countries outside the UK and EU that are not covered by EU GDPR, UK GDPR or adequacy regulations.

The feature enables users to establish a list of whitelisted countries they are open to sharing data with, based on their legal obligations, jurisdictional requirements and risk appetite. Users can specify the countries of their preference, for example just the UK, France and Germany. We also provide pre-established sets of countries, such as Budapest Convention countries, OECD countries and EU adequacy countries. Users can also choose to share with all GSE users.

Where whitelisting applies

Whitelisting applies to both Open signal sharing and Community Feeds.

GSE Members can choose to make signal feeds available as “Community Feeds” that others can apply to access. This category of feeds is viewable by all GSE partners, but requires extra steps and consents before it can be consumed by a GSE user.

Why this matters

• A transnational problem requires a global response. Our collective mission as a GSE community is to share threat intelligence across geographic borders so that people can be protected from fraud.
• These new features help to make the platform truly global. Country-level controls open the door to partners beyond the UK and EU.
• Users stay in control. Each user chooses which countries they share with, based on their own risk appetite.

Data sharing is crucial to fighting scams and fraud, yet organisations often hold useful intelligence but remain uncertain about whether and how they can share it across sectors and borders. We wrote about this very challenge in Connecting the Dots to Fight Scams: A Practical Framework for Data Sharing, a guide developed with input from an informal multi-stakeholder working group of experts from organisations across the banking, telecom and technology industries and the public sector.

By building country-level data sharing controls into its capabilities, the GSE delivers compliant cross-border sharing as a built-in platform feature. We believe this is a world first.