Towards Semantic Coherence: Understanding Cybersecurity and Digital Sovereignty in the Automotive Landscape

The relationship between cybersecurity and digital sovereignty is increasingly viewed as complementary. Cybersecurity focuses on the technical and operational protection of digital infrastructures, while digital sovereignty encompasses the political and strategic dimensions related to technological autonomy and the ability to regulate and make decisions. This intersection is particularly noticeable in technology and regulation- heavy sectors, such as the automotive industry, where vehicles are transforming into connected and intelligent platforms capable of generating, processing, and transmitting large amounts of data. In this context, protecting user privacy emerges as a critical challenge, closely linked to cybersecurity needs and the control over the cross-border flow of information. These dynamics show how difficult it is to coordinate cybersecurity, data management, and compliance across different countries, especially when foreign suppliers and supply chains are involved. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a coherent, shared, and relevant technical-conceptual framework that integrates operational requirements, fundamental rights, and strategic objectives. This paper proposes a semantic approach to analyze, systematize, and map emerging key concepts from normative sources, policy documents, and standards, using both expert-based approach and Artificial Intelligence models, to facilitate the extraction and organization of domain-specific terminology enhancing the population or enrichment of semantic resources. Results show the importance of controlled vocabularies, such as thesauri, which serve as fundamental tools for facilitating classification, interoperability, and for supporting normative production. In the case of the automotive sector, it becomes an operational support to address challenges related to cybersecurity, privacy protection, and regulatory autonomy.