Active collaborations for trustworthy data management in ad hoc networks

We propose a trust-based data management framework for enabling individual devices to harness the potential power of distributed computation, storage, and sensory resources available in pervasive computing environments. Available resources include those currently present in the fixed surrounding infrastructure as well as those resources made available by other mobile devices in the vicinity. We take a holistic approach that considers trust, security, and privacy issues of data management in these environments. We focus on collaborative mechanisms to provide a platform for trustworthy data management for devices in ad hoc networks. A fundamental aspect of our framework is a pack formation mechanism for enabling collaborative peer interaction in the pervasive computing environments based on context information and landmarks. A pack provides a routing substrate for enabling devices to find reliable sources of information. A pack also provides a platform for coordinated pro-active and reactive mechanisms that can detect and respond to malicious activity. Consequently, a pack can be used for providing a foundation to distributed trust management and data intensive interactions. We describe our proposed data management framework with an emphasis on forming packs in mobile ad-hoc networks and present preliminary results from our simulation of collaborative data management using packs