Specification of the TrustMan System for Assisting Management of VBEs

The establishement of trust relationships among organizations has proved to enhance the cooperation among organizations involved in Virtual organization Breeding Environments (VBEs) and their collaboration within the Virtual Organizations (VOs). Main obstacles to establishing trust relationships however stems from the lack of a common definition for trust and trust parameters. Consequently the assessment of the trust level of organizations as well as the creation of trust among organizations are quite challenging. In practice organizations individually assess the trustworthiness of others both manually and in an ad hoc manner. This paper presents an approach and a system for semi-automatic Trust Management (TrustMan) in collaborative networks. Based on the multi-criteria and customizable trust model that we have defined in earlier publications, here we define the TrustMan system that on one hand aggregates our previously introduced models and approaches, and on the other hand automates the processes related to management of trust among organizations in VBEs.