Trust In Computing
Data sharing in distributed computing applications is a hot topic of research. The internet has made it possible for service providers / data owners to present applications / data to a wider customer bases. However, once the data is released the owner relinquishes control; this problem has proved to be particularly acute in the music industry. Here the data owners (music companies) have suffered from illegal file sharing and have had to change their business models to present music files through legitimate online services.
Protecting such legally acquired content from illegal sharing has led to security technologies such as DRM. This provides the ability for a data owner to share data with untrusted users. The concept of the untrusted user is associated with the belief that the user could potentially break any rules associated with sharing a unprotected data object (i.e. illegally share it). Thus DRM tries to ensure the file is useless if transferred outside of the users computing environment.
However, trust in computing is not just restricted to the concept of securing data objects such as music files. In fact it is an emerging area of research for a wide range of distributed computing applications. Simple access restriction is no longer adequate to secure distributed computing frameworks that depend on the use of dynamic and flexible workflows that often consist of services and data from multiple providers. Instead policy based access is required within the frameworks.
Thus, once a user or service provider is part of a framework their data use and actions will be monitored. Any data / application access they request will be based on trust negotiations between the service providers that will take into account the users previous behaviour as a trust rating. The result may reflect in the costs associated with using data in the framework and the types of services the user is offered. This concept can be seen in online auction sites such as eBay where reputation is a good indicator of the likely behaviour of a seller.
In terms of learning environments the development of a eLearning ecosystem will have to support learners and learning service providers in a flexible / dynamic way. Thus trust negotiation and management will form a large part of interaction within the system.