Trust Model Evaluation Criteria: a Detailed Analysis of Trust Evaluation

The advent of the internet has resulted in the exponential growth in availability of information as well as the sources from which this information can be gathered. Information has become an asset as well as a vital tool for decision making processes. In order to gain new information, a business is often required to give some information, it is already in possession of, up. This information could be of a sensitive nature and a business needs to know if the source it is exchanging information with can be trusted. Trust models have been proposed to solve this dilemma. Trust models use logical rules to analyze the nature of interactions. An agent, which is a computer running a trust model, analyzes other agents it comes into contact with and determines a trust level. The trust level is a single value that controls all interactions occurring between participating agents. Values above a certain threshold are seen as trusted and values below are seen as distrusted. The problem is that these trust models were found to be wide and varied, with no common set of features between them, making it difficult to determine which models address which particular issues of the concept of trust. This paper proposes a set of criteria that is to be used to evaluate various trust models in order to identify the issues addressed by specific models. Four main categories into which these criteria fall have been identified. Due to space constraints one of these is discussed in detail followed by an example analysis of a trust model in order to illustrate how these criteria are used during trust model evaluation.