Towards Decentralised Security Policies for e-Health Collaborations

Security in decentralised collaborative environments present huge challenges where many entities from different autonomous security domains want to access and share resources. This is largely due to cross-boundary issues where security credentials and policies are heterogeneous, and where yielding control to a centralised authority is not an option. Numerous cross-boundary approaches exist today and trust negotiation remains a promising solution that is rapidly evolving. In this paper we present dynamic trust negotiation, an approach that folds remote security credentials into local security credentials through trust contracts, thereby bridging the gap making decentralised security policies for multi-domain collaboration difficult. We show how trust can be realised between strangers through trusted intermediaries where direct trust negotiation between these strangers is otherwise unacceptable.