Managing Effective Collaboration in Cybersecurity Alliances Using Social Computational Trust

To enable effective collaboration, trust in the ability of an alliance member to adequately perform joined tasks is an essential element. Such trust needs to be organized, evaluated and maintained amongst all alliance members. In this paper, we present a social computational trust model (SCTM) to evaluate trust as featured by alliance members. Specifically, we consider three different distinctive trustworthiness elements: competence, benevolence ,and integrity. To evaluate the trust of a particular member, we take into account two sources of evidence as well as the context of interactions between the parties. Based on our SCTM model, we have developed an algorithm that ranks the members based on their capabilities, behavior, and integrity in the context of a task that is expected to be performed. A cybersecurity alliance case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the SCTM model. Experimental results from a real-world testbed are used to validate the presented SCTM model in selecting the right partner to defend against cyber-attacks.