Autonomous trust for web services

Purpose - This paper aims to show that information and evidence found in the XML-based environment of web services can allow web services providers to gain a sense of the trustworthiness of web services requestors over time.Design methodology approach - A literature review on trust in web services environment is provided. Trust management models, and an existing trust specification for web services are discussed. Next, a conceptual framework for web services trust formation is presented.Findings - The paper makes explicit types of information that can be used for trust formation. Web services providers are given the ability to trust requestors autonomously by making use of information that is published through web services standards, defined over and above a web services interface. The approach incorporates elements of social trust as it is concerned with more than cryptographic controls. It has mechanisms that allow a web services provider to manage trust autonomously, enabling different types of trust for different situations.Research limitations implications - A conceptual framework for trust formation has been defined that identifies a proposal for trust calculation. The paper does not address the implementation of the framework, and calculation of trust over information categories.Practical implications - The paper identifies a practical approach to autonomous web services trust by making use of web services standards such as WS-Policy and WSMetadataExchange.Originality value - This paper identifies a taxonomy of trust information that can be used to make explicit the requirements for web services trust.