Collaborative Computer Security and Trust Management combines perspectives of leading researchers in collaborative security to discuss recent advances in this burgeoning new field. Practitioners, researchers, and academicians are presented with lessons learned by international experts to meet the new challenges of security in the global information age. Covering topics such as trust-based security, threat and risk analysis, and data sharing, this reference book provides a complete collection of the latest field developments.

Security is usually centrally managed, for example in a form of policies duly executed by individual nodes. An alternative trend of using collaboration and trust to provide security has gained momentum over the past few years. Instead of centrally managed security policies, nodes may use specific knowledge (both local and acquired from other nodes) to make security-related decisions. For example, in reputation-based schemes, the reputation of a given node (and hence its security access rights) can be determined based on the recommendations of peer nodes. As systems are being deployed on ever-greater scale without direct connection to their distant home base, the need for self management is rapidly increasing. Interaction after interaction, as the nodes collaborate, there is the emergence of a digital ecosystem that can be driven by trust. By guiding the local decisions of the nodes, for example, with whom the nodes collaborate, global properties of the ecosystem where the nodes operate may be guaranteed. Thus, the security property of the ecosystem may be driven by self-organizing mechanisms based on trust. Depending on which local collaboration is preferred, a more trustworthy ecosystem may emerge.