Consumer trust in online services

This year sees the launch of the EU project OPTET (Operational Trustworthiness Enabling Technologies) designed to address issues of trust in tomorrow’s Internet services. An Internet service is made up of several subsidiary services. Since these components are provided by a variety of suppliers, it is difficult for the end user to know who is really behind it all. And of who is responsible if something goes wrong? For example, the Dropbox service utilizes resources from Amazon’s cloud service. SINTEF ICT is heading one of the OPTET subprojects. Researchers intend to design a case study and develop methods which will enable confirmation of the levels of security in the various components which make up an Internet service.