Trust-based Hierarchical Role Enhanced Policy for Adaptive Availability of Confidential Information

Abstract : The objective of this project was to design techniques that preserve confidentiality and integrity of information in computer systems while providing dynamic trust-based updates so that information is more readily available. We have developed various models including for managing data in the web of trust, mapping objects to various trust zones, assigning trust values to objects based on their component structures and subjects' evaluations, identification of corrupted objects in the system, determining vulnerability of subjects by deceptive information in an information flow network, data authentication and provenance, storage and management of provenance metadata, restricting inferences of sensitive data from non-sensitive data, and knowledge extraction and analysis for insider threat mitigation. This work resulted in three Ph.D. dissertations, 11 M.S. thesis, and 27 research papers with few more in press for publication.