A security extension for securing the feedback & rating values in TIDE framework

In today's online environment, ratings and trust are paramount to the validity of transactions. Many consider the trustworthiness of an online entity prior to engaging in a transaction or collaboration activity. To derive entity's trustworthiness, feedbacks and ratings about this entity must first be collected electronically from other entities (i.e. raters) in the environment. As with any electronic transmission, security always becomes a crucial issue. The tampered feedback and rating values would result in an invalid measurement of an entity's trustworthiness. Thus, this issue needs to be addressed to ensure the accuracy of the trustworthiness computation. In this paper, we propose a security extension to our TIDE (Trust In Digital Environment) framework. This security extension upholds the integrity of feedback and ratings value during its electronic transmissions. The inclusivity of this method further maintains the accuracy of TIDE trustworthiness computation. In addition, this security extension can be universally applied in other trust and reputation systems.