Assuring Trust between the Edges

In order for the DoD to leverage the advantages enabled by network-centric operations, it is critical to ensure the quality of the information that feeds decision-making processes. The ability of an enemy to compromise network elements in order to inject spurious information must be viewed as one of the biggest threats to missions supported by network-centric operations. In this research project we will develop an open architectural framework, along with a supporting protocol stack, that allows the trust associated with network elements to be evaluated and acted upon within a networked environment. This will include a sophisticated semantic technology service that may be out-of-band to previously established operations, and allows subjective information to be incorporated into trust calculations. We will also provide an analysis of the security of the overall architecture.