Moving Towards Trustworthy Computing

Dr S M Patel                                                             J V Smart

Professor & Head                                                     Lecturer

G H Patel Post Graduate Department of
Computer Science & Technology

Sardar Patel University

Vallabh Vidyanagar

The society has gone through a number of large technology shifts that have shaped the culture: the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the advent of electricity, the radio, the telephone, the television, and of course, the microprocessor that has made personal computing a reality. Many broadly adopted technologies—like electricity, automobiles, postal system or telephones—have become trusted parts of our daily lives. Each of these have fundamentally transformed the way millions of people live, work, and communicate. From the very beginning of computing, many revolutionary changes have been observed. Also, several dimensions in computing have been identified and used. The steady improvement in technology and lowering costs of personal computing technology has made personal computers a building block of everybody's home and working lives all over the globe. It has been observed that not only men, but also machines are becoming the users of computing network.  The Internet has changed the concept of business. E-business now takes the full benefit of computing power. While designing the computing system key factors like reliability, flexibility, maintainability, interoperability, usability etc. are kept in mind.  However, computing and information technology services will only be truly pervasive when they become so dependable that we can just forget about them. In other words, at a time where computers are starting to find their way into just about every aspect of our life, we need to be able to trust them. The way we build computers, software systems and services has changed in the last 40 to 50 years but the expectations are much higher than the reality. Issues like system crashes, failures, viruses, spam etc. continue to plague the users. There is a great need of adding trust in the systems. Trust is a broad concept, and making something trustworthy requires a social infrastructure as well as solid engineering. Anyone in the world can buy a new bicycle and start riding without worrying about whether it will work or not. Customers simply assume that it will work as expected. A combination of engineering, business practice, and regulation has resulted in people taking the new bicycle for granted.

Generally, a user expects safety, reliability, and business integrity from a trustworthy technology.  Business integrity means the integrity of the organization offering the technology. These categories, and their implications for computing, are discussed below.

Goals:  The key goal of trustworthy computing is to make computing so safe and reliable that people simply take it for granted – just as they use post and telephone system for granted today. The Goal considers trust from the user's point of view. The key questions are: Is the technology available when the user needs it? Does it keep the user’s confidential information safe? Does it do what it is supposed to do? And do the people who own and operate the business that provides the service always do the right thing? These are the goals that any Trustworthy Computing has to meet:

Goals	The basis for a customer's decision to trust a system
Security	The customer can expect that systems are resilient to attack, and that the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system and its data are protected.
Privacy	The customer is able to control data about themselves, and those using such data adhere to fair information principles
Reliability	The customer can depend on the product to fulfill its functions when required to do so.
Business Integrity	The vendor of a product behaves in a responsive and responsible manner.

All of these goals raise issues relating to engineering, business practices, and public perceptions, although not all to the same degree. In order to clarify terms, here are examples for the Goals:

• Security: A virus doesn't infect and crash my software, application, or PC. An intruder cannot render my system unusable or make unauthorized alterations to my data.
• Privacy: User’s personal information is not disclosed in unauthorized ways. When user provides personal information to others, he is clearly informed of what will—and won't—be done with it, and he can be sure they will do what they promise.
• Reliability: The system is supposed to work as exactly expected, not more or even less.
• Business Integrity: The service provider responds rapidly and effectively when user report a problem. The vendors provide the quality products and the product support is available.