The Science Seminar Series: Septemeber 18, 2008

A Vector Model of Trust for Reasoning about Trustworthiness of Entities Involved in Security Contexts.

Dr. Sudip Chakraborty

Department of Math & Computer Science

Valdosta State University

Place: Powell Hall
Time: 4:00 -5:00pm

Abstract:

Information technology is increasingly driven by the requirements of confidentiality, integrity, availability, and usability of
systems and information resources. To measure the level of assurance that we can have about the proper functioning of these systems
according to our requirements, the notion of 'trust' is important. Secure systems have been built under the premise that concepts like
"trustworthiness" or "trusted" are well understood. However, there is no agreement among researchers about the meaning, representation,
evaluation, evolution, and method of comparison/composition of trust. The lack of agreement makes it difficult to reason about trustworthiness
of entities involved in different security contexts.

This talk gives an overview of a new model of trust to alleviate the above problems. In this model, trust is a quantitatively measurable entity, depending
on different independent parameters. The model proposes methods to evaluate the parameters and the trust level, and methods to formalize trust evolution, compare and compose two trust relationships.