Trust in Distributed Information Infrastructures
Date:
1 January 2009 (All day) – 31 December 2010 (All day)
SUMMARY:
Main research question: It is clear that the Internet is transforming the way we live. Social networking has become the new emerging phenomenon in the Internet space; blogging has turned citizens into journalists; and e-commerce sites have spurred global competition in the marketplace. At the same time, by almost any reasonable standard, the lack of security and privacy on the Internet is no longer at socially acceptable levels. From consumer threats (such as identity theft) to enterprise threats (e.g. loss of personally identifiable information data and economic espionage) to government threats (e.g. information warfare), there is little doubt that creative, adaptive and sophisticated adversaries are misusing the Internet to malicious effects. One fundamental issue that forms the basis of many of these challenges is concerned with trust and managing trust between autonomous unfamiliar entities: how does one user trust another user or a service provider over the Internet, how to design systems that are trustworthy and dependable, how does a user enjoy a trust enhanced experience enabling him/her to make more reliable and effective decisions online? This taskforce will consider these and related questions and develop a framework where such issues can be addressed.
TASKFORCE COORDINATOR
Prof. Vijay Varadharajan, Macquarie University
TASKFORCE TEAM MEMBERS
Prof. Xiaofang Zhou, Queensland University
Prof. K. Rao, Melbourne University
Prof. Shirley Gregor, ANU
Prof. Yanchun Zhang (VU)
Prof. Boualem Benatallah (UNSW)
Dr. Michael Hitchens (Macquarie University)
Dr Kerry Taylor/Dr John Zic (CSIRO)
TASKFORCE SIGNIFICANCE
As mentioned above in the main research question, the issues of trust and the design and management of trustworthy and dependable systems and infrastructures are critical in this information age and present several fundamental research challenges. Users are concerned about their personal information falling into wrong hands or being used against them (in a malicious manner). There are multiple trust models in play and it is not always clear as to how to decide the level of trust that should be placed on the information obtained from infrastructures such as in healthcare and financial applications. The situation is being further aggravated by the dramatic developments in technologies such as distributed mobile computing infrastructures, peer to peer networking, wireless and mobile ad hoc networks and service oriented distributed applications.
The nature of this taskforce is somewhat different from others in that its main objective is to explore this area of research and formulate a proposal for the development of a research centre of excellence. This could contribute to and help to form the basis for the next stage of development for the EII network.
TASKFORCE SCOPE
The main focus of the taskforce work will be to have in-depth brainstorm and research discussions on aspects related to the modelling, design and management of trust in distributed information infrastructures. Specific issues include how to model and design large scale dynamic trustworthy systems, the types of trust policies that are needed, how to capture and reason about dynamic changes in policies, techniques for trust policy management in distributed information infrastructures, and how to provide users a trust enhanced experience.
SPECIFIC MILESTONES, EVENTS or ACTIVITIES
Given the main objective is to formulate a proposal for a research centre of excellence, the proposed activities of the taskforce are essentially in the form of meetings and focussed workshops amongst the members of the taskforce and invited guests.
We expect the first meeting to identify the key topics that need to be addressed in the research proposal. Between the first and the second meeting, we envisage some preliminary work to be done by the members on the selected topics. The second meeting is expected to refine these further and develop an outline framework for the proposal. Between the second meeting and third meeting, we envisage the members to further refine the framework. At the third meeting, we envisage a draft version of the proposal to be finalised.
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