Architecture for security and trust in digital environments (SecuTIDE)

Digital environments have long been considered an enabler for information sharing, electronic transactions, knowledge dissemination and online collaborations. As they gradually evolve to the concept of an open and heterogeneous environment that promotes transient interactions and collaborations, the importance of technologies that provide security protection and trust measurement will increase significantly. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a security architecture and trust framework that enables strong security protection and measurement of initial trust in digital environments. To meet this purpose, this thesis delivers a SecuTIDE (Security and Trust In Digital Environments) architecture that consists of two major components: DRPM (Distributed Resource Protection Mechanism) and TIDE (Trust In Digital Environments). DRPM is a mechanism that allows the distributed authentication and authorisation of entities in digital environments. Additionally, DRPM also facilitates a secure transfer of information during the transactions and/or collaborations. The effectiveness of DRPM in providing secure interaction and collaboration is explored through security validity, computational cost and scalability testing and analysis. TIDE is a de-centralised framework proposed to measure the trustworthiness of entities in the initial transaction. TIDE encompasses complex methods, formulae and algorithms to mitigate multifaceted malicious strategies and behaviors that undermine trust computation. TIDE’s effectiveness and resilience in determining an accurate trustworthiness is shown through an extensive set of experiments and benchmarking against malicious strategies and prominent trust solutions. In addition to proposing technologies for enabling secure and trustworthy digital environments, this thesis investigates the usability and effectiveness of several prominent online trust rating systems. An anonymous survey was conducted to study users’ perception on various online trust rating systems, ratings and incentives. All solutions and the survey presented in this thesis will contribute to a secure and trustworthy digital environment.