Page 19 - Trust in ICT 2017

Trust in ICT 1

Currently, some systems are taking advantages of social relationship models to offer secure and reliable
services by using the reputation and trust such as eBay, Amazon and Google’s Web Page Rankings.

Building security: In security aspects, trust relates much to the degree of confidence one has in the
correctness of a function. For example, a company policy controls access at the entrance, so that only eligible
persons in possession of a smart card or in knowledge of a PIN code are granted access to a corporate
building.

4.1.3 Different stakeholders’ viewpoints on trust

According to stakeholders of ICT world, there are different viewpoints of trust. For example, in
telecommunications, the user trusts the operator while he believes to get a correct bill. At the same time the
operator provides the accounting and billing system to produce correct billing data. The user in this case may
trust the operator.

4.2 General Aspects of Trust

4.2.1 Trust Notation
It is challenging to concisely define “trust” of an entity due to its uniqueness to each individual entity. Several
authors attempts to define trust from a sociological point of view. They define trust as the trusting behaviour
that one person has on another person in a situation where an ambiguous path exists. In such definition,
trust is used to mitigate the risks of the dealings with others. Other authors further define trust as the
capacity and belief of an entity that the other entity would meet its expectations. However, one of the most
prominent works that attempt to derive the notion of trust and was used by many research in online
environment is conducted by Gambetta [2]. The authors state that someone is deemed as trustworthy,
subject to the probability that he will perform a particular action that is beneficial or non-detrimental for us.
This definition is further extended by incorporating the notion of competence along with the predictability.
Gambetta et al. definition on trust is also supported by the author in [3] which further defines trust in an
electronic forefront as the competency belief that an agent would act reliably, dependably and securely
within a given context. This belief can be quantitatively derived from a subjective probabilistic that an agent
has over another in a given period of time.

Trust in an electronic network can be divided into two types: direct (personal) trust and third party trust.
• Direct (personal) trust is a situation where a trusting relationship is nurtured by two entities. This
type of trust is formed after these entities have performed transactions with each other, e.g. entity.
A inherently trusts entity B after a number of successful transactions that involved both entities.
• On the contrary, third-party trust is a trust relationship of an entity that is formed from the third
party recommendations. This means no previous transaction ever occurred between the two
interacting entities. For example, entity A trusts entity B because B is trusted by entity C. In this
example, entity A derives trust of B from C, and A also trusts entity C does not lie to him.

As with any types of trust relationship, there is a link with the risk. Risk is not within the scope of this technical
report, however, it is important to note that risk affect the trusting relationship between the entities. Author
in [4] stresses that an entity will only proceed with the transaction if the risk is perceived as acceptable.

4.2.2 Trust Characteristics
There are several important characteristics of trust that further enhance our understanding about trust
digital environments [5].
Trust is dynamic: as it applies only in a given time period and maybe change as time goes by. For example,
for the past one year Alice highly trusts Bob. However, today Alice found that Bob lied to her, consequently,
Alice no longer trusts Bob.
Trust is context-dependent: trust applies only in a given context. The degree of trust on different contexts is
significantly different. For example, Alice may trust Bob to provide financial advice but not for medical advice.

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