iTrust is an Information Society Technologies (IST) working group, which started on 1st of August, 2002. The working group is being funded as a concerted action/ thematic network by the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) unit of the IST program. The aim of iTrust is to provide a forum for cross-disciplinary investigation of the application of trust as a means of establishing security and con?dence in the global computing infrastructure, recognizing trust as a crucial enabler for meaningful and mutually bene?cial interactions. The proposed forum is intended to bring together researchers with a keen interest in complementary aspects of trust, from technology-oriented disciplines and the ?elds of law, social sciences, and philosophy. Hence providing the c- sortium participants (and the research communities associated with them) with the common background necessary for advancing toward an in-depth underst- ding of the fundamental issues and challenges in the area of trust management in open systems. Broadly the initiative aims to: – facilitate the cross-disciplinary investigation of fundamental issues underp- ning computational trust models by bringing together expertise from te- nology oriented sciences, law, philosophy, and social sciences – facilitate the emergence of widely acceptable trust management processes for dynamic open systems and applications – facilitate the development of new paradigms in the area of dynamic open systems which e?ectively utilize computational trust models – help the incorporation of trust management elements in existing standards.
