Abstract
Recently, ontology-based approaches to security, in particular to information security, have been recognized as a relevant challenge and as an area of research interest of its own. As the number of ontologies about security grows for supporting different applications, semantic interoperability issues emerge. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ontological analysis of the concept of security understood as a broad application-independent security ontology. Core (or reference) ontologies of security cover this issue to some extent, enabling multiple applications crossing domains of security (information systems, economics, public health, crime etc.). In this paper, we investigate the current state-of-the-art on Security Core Ontologies. We select, analyze, and categorize studies on this topic, supporting a future ontological analysis of security, which could ground a well-founded security core ontology. Notably, we show that: most existing ontologies are not publicly findable/accessible; foundational ontologies are under-explored in this field of research; there seems to be no common ontology of security. From these findings, we make the case for the need of a FAIR Core Security Ontology. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.