PROTRU: Leveraging Provenance to Enhance Network Trust Based on Distributed Local Intelligence

Provenance can play a significant role in an information system for supporting the calculation of information trust. A node’s trust can change over time after its initial deployment due to various reasons such as energy loss, environmental conditions or exhausting sources. We introduce a node-level trust-enhancing mechanism for information networks using provenance. A unique characteristic of the proposed trust architecture presented here is the use of provenance through the path of the information from source to destination in determining the information trust. In this proposed architecture each node in the system has a trust and provenance vector. Each information item transmitted over the network has a trust value associated with it. Nodes reexamine and update the trust values associated with the information, creating a distributed system that is more flexible and more responsive. As our system allows reconfigurations, initiatives taken by the intermediate nodes such as replacement of untrusted nodes will enhance the network trust in mission critical situations faster than a centralized approach. Through simulations we verify our model and show that our approach can provide substantial enhancements in trust as compared to the traditional network approaches.