Trust as a Service: Building and Managing Trust in the Internet of Things

Trust is an abstract, multi-faceted and subjective concept. It is difficult to define trust and identify the elements that establish trust. At the same time, trust is regarded as an essential pillar for our digital economy, our cyber infrastructure and the success of Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, we review the definition of trust from multi-disciplinary perspectives to illustrate the nature and concept of trust. We integrate the diverse perspectives, and categorize them based on how trust is established, leveraged and maintained in the real world. We further investigate the elements that are pertinent to the formation of trust and to the foundations for provisioning Trust as a Service. We conclude the paper with a summary and a discussion on future research on trust building and management in IoT.