Enforcing Honesty in Assured Information Sharing Within a Distributed System

The growing number of distributed information systems such as the internet has created a need for security in data sharing. When several autonomous parties attempt to share data, there is not necessarily any guarantee that the participants will share data truthfully. In fact, there is often a large incentive to engage in behavior that can sabotage the effectiveness of such a system. We analyze these situations in light of game theory, a mathematical model which permits us to consider behavior and choices for any autonomous party. This paper uses this theory to create a behavior enforcement method that does not need a central management system. We use a simple punishment method that is inherently available in most scenarios. Our approach is applicable to a variety of assured information sharing applications where the members of a coalition have to work together to solve a problem.