A survey of trust in internet applications

Abstract

Trust is an important aspect of decision making for Internet applications and particularly influences the specification of security policy, i.e., who is authorized to perform actions as well as the techniques needed to manage and implement security to and for the applications. This survey examines the various definitions of trust in the literature and provides a working definition of trust for Internet applications. The properties of trust relationships are explained and classes of different types of trust identified in the literature are discussed with examples. Some influential examples of trust management systems are described.