Return to search

Trust in distributed information systems

Trust management is an important issue in the analysis and design of secure information systems. This is especially the case where centrally managed security is not possible. Trust issues arise not only in business functions, but also in technologies used to support these functions. There are a vast number of services and applications that must accommodate appropriate notions of trust. Trust and trust management have become a hot research area. The motivation of this dissertation is to build up a comprehensive trust management approach that covers the analysis/modelling of trust relationships and the development of trust management systems in a consistent manner. A formal model of trust relationship is proposed with a strict mathematical structure that can not only reflect many of the commonly used notions of trust, but also provide a solid basis for a unified taxonomy framework of trust where a range of useful properties of trust relationships can be expressed and compared. A classification of trust relationships is presented. A set of definitions, propositions, and operations are proposed for the properties about scope and diversity of trust relationships, direction and symmetry of trust relationships, and relations of trust relationships. A general methodology for analysis and modelling of trust relationships in distributed information system is presented. The general methodology includes a range of major concerns in the whole lifecycle of trust relationships, and provides practical guidelines for analysis and modelling of trust relationships in the real world. A unified framework for trust management is proposed. Trust request, trust evaluation, and trust consuming are handled in a comprehensive and consistent manner. A variety of trust mechanisms including reputation, credentials, local data, and environment parameters are covered under the same framework. A trust management architecture is devised for facilitating the development of trust management systems. A trust management system for federated medical services is developed as an implementation example of the proposed trust management architecture. An online booking system is developed to show how a trust management system is employed by applications. A trust management architecture for web services is devised. It can be viewed as an extension of WS-Trust with the ability to integrate the message building blocks supported by web services protocol stack and other trust mechanisms. It provides high level architecture and guidelines for the development and deployment of a trust management layer in web services. Trust management extension of CardSpace identity system is introduced. Major concerns are listed for the analysis and modelling of trust relationships, and development of trust management systems for digital identities. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/204572
Date January 2008
CreatorsZhao, Weiliang, University of Western Sydney, College of Health and Science, School of Computing and Mathematics
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish

Page generated in 0.0019 seconds