Trust is typically interpreted as the confidence, belief, and expectation regarding the reliability, integrity and ability of an entity on which we depend, while identity generally consists of a name and a set of attributes used to select and recognize a unique entity within a domain. With the rapid innovation in mobile and Internet computing and communications, there is an exponential growth in the number of entities that we interact with and that we depend on for our welfare. Trust and identity are therefore becoming essential factors for the sustainability of the mobile and Internet computing revolution.

The transfer of the social constructs of trust and reputation into digital and computational concepts help in designing and implementing large scale online markets and communities, and will also play an important role in the converging mobile and Internet environments. Trust management is emerging as a promising technology to facilitate collaboration among entities in environments where traditional security paradigms are insufficient due to incomplete knowledge about remote parties and the lack of centralized control. However, without the proper support of identity management, trust management cannot be practically deployed in real networks. Identity management and trust management rely on each other in complex ways, e.g. through the necessity of correct identification when evaluating trust relationships between entities, and through the need for identity trust in order to achieve dependable search, discovery, recognition and connection. Identity management is also an essential factor for authorization policy definition, authentication, access control, and personalized services.

Current research in trust and identity management still faces a number of challenges with regard to e.g., usability, robustness, privacy, adaptability and scalability. Due to the dynamic constraints of mobile computing environments such as limited computing capacity, restricted user interface for human-device interaction, power management issues, radio signal exposure, network tracking capabilities, and user privacy requirements, all the above challenges are exacerbated.

This special issue in the IET Information Security aims at presenting advanced research results related to trust and identity management in the area of mobile and Internet computing and communications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

 Models and technologies for trust and identity and their interdependency
 Perspectives, theories and fundamental concepts in trust and identity management
 Standardization for trust and identity
 Scalability, mobility and federation of identity
 Evaluation of trust and reputation
 Robustness of trust, reputation and identity management systems
 Inter-domain trust, reputation and identity management
 Mobile computing trust and identity technologies
 Recommender systems and personalization
 Privacy in mobile and Internet computing and communications
 Applications and case studies of trust and identity management systems
 Challenges and issues for practical deployment of trust and identity management
 Social and psychological issues of trust and identity
 Business issues related to trust and identity
 Human-computer interaction for trust and identity
 Studies in usable trust and identity management


Submissions

All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted via the journal’s online submission and peer-review systems at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/iet-ifs. Please follow the paper format and instructions given on this website and indicate that the submission is to the special issue ‘TrustID’. Each paper will go through a rigorous peer-review process by at least three international researchers.


Important Dates

Paper submissions due: February 15th, 2012
Notification of decision: April 15th, 2012
Revision due: June 1st, 2012
Acceptance notification: July 15th, 2012
Final version due: August 1st, 2012


Guest Editors

Zheng Yan, XiDian University, China/Aalto University, Finland
Guojun Wang, Central South University, China
Robert H. Deng, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Audun Jøsang, University of Oslo, Norway


Contacts:

Please email inquiries concerning this special issue to:
zhengyan.pz@gmail.com;
csgjwang@gmail.com;
robertdeng@smu.edu.sg;
josang@mn.uio.no