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In this essay, we argue that the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution calls for a reexamination of trust patterns within and across organizations. We identify fundamental changes in terms of (1) what form organizational trust takes, (2) how it is produced, and (3) who needs to be trusted. First, and most broadly, trust is likely to become more impersonal and systemic. Trust between actors is increasingly substituted by trust in a system based on digital technology. Second, in terms of trust production modes, characteristic- and institution-based trust production will gain in importance. Third, despite the move toward system trust, there will nonetheless be a need to trust certain individuals; however, these trustees are no longer the counterparts to the interaction but rather third parties in charge of the technological systems and data. Thus, the focal targets of interpersonal trust are changing.
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Trust-Based Security; Or, Trust Considered Harmful
Our review of common, popular risk analysis frameworks finds that they are very homogenous in their approach. These are considered IT Security Industry ”best practices.” However, one wonders if they are indeed ”best”, as evinced by the almost daily news of large companies suffering major compromises. Embedded in these ”best practices” is the notion that ”trust” is ”good”, i.e. is a desirable feature: ”trusted computing,” ”trusted third party,” etc. We argue for the opposite: that vulnerabilities stem from trust relationships. We propose a a paradigm for risk analysis centered around identifying and minimizing trust relationships. We argue that by bringing trust relationships to the foreground, we can identify paths to compromise that would otherwise go undetected; a more comprehensive assessment of vulnerability, from which one can better prioritize and reduce risk.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1739025
- PAR ID:
- 10317421
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2020 New Security Paradigms Workshop
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3442167.3442179
