A framework for web services trust

Abstract

Today, organisations that seek a competitive advantage are adopting virtual infrastructures that share and manage computing resources. The trend is toward implementing collaborating applications supported by web services technology. In order to enable secure interoperation between participants of these environments, trust is an important requirement to address. Current solutions to trust between web components are limited, as they are usually established via cryptographic mechanisms, in the presence of trusted third parties. To accommodate the dynamic and fluid nature of web services environments, a framework for trust assessment and computation is presented. The trust framework is characterised by information and reasoning. It has mechanisms that allow web services entities to manage trust autonomously, by activating a trust level and trust types by means of a rule-based fuzzy cognitive map. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.