Toward Secure and Credible Information Sharing Using Information Supply Chains

Information assurance and information sharing are two contradictory yet important tasks in a distributed and information rich environment. Many reports regarding intelligence failures on preventing the Sep 11’s tragic events challenge the current information technologies that are often segregated for easiness of information assurance and demand systems that better support information sharing requirements. To meet this challenge, we propose an information supply chain (ISC) framework that aims to not only promote legitimate information sharing, but also enforce secured access controls and provide an effective way to improve information credibility. Initial implementation has demonstrated that the information-sharing-agents that are based on the ISC framework can capture, consolidate, investigate, and satisfy dynamic information requirements in a secure, credible, and timely manner. We expect this research can yield further results that can inspire information technology practitioners to understand the challenges and make information systems efficient and accountable.