Trust negotiation is the process of establishing trust between parties before sharing sensitive information online. It is important in areas such as finance, health, and social services. Digital credentials are used to verify identity and establish trust, often through a two-way relationship between the user and server. Additional layers of security may be added to further establish trust.
Trust negotiation is a term that applies to how sensitive information is shared between two or more parties on the internet. The growth of the World Wide Web has made it relatively easy for people from different corners of the globe to reach people they don’t even know. Before they can share sensitive information with each other, a certain level of trust needs to be established through the process of negotiating trust.
The entire purpose of a trust negotiation is to establish order in how information is shared on the World Wide Web. The Web is an open system with limited tools to control how outsiders share and access sensitive information. Trust negotiations seek to limit this information leakage through several steps that serve to establish and identify others in open systems with the goal of verifying information and building trust before serious interactions can occur.
Establishing trust between two strangers is two-way, meaning that two parties are often unwilling to share sensitive information until both parties have proven their trustworthiness through the process of negotiating trust. Examples of places on the web where trust negotiation is vital include websites about financial services, health services, and even social services.
For example, a person trying to access an online bank account will have to go through the process of negotiating trust with the bank’s server before establishing that the bank account belongs to him or her. Usually, the way to establish this trust is by providing digital credentials, which is a two-way relationship between the account holder and the bank’s server. The account holder initiates trust negotiations by going to the bank’s website and providing their username. The server will verify this information before moving to another page where the account holder can verify a predetermined symbol associated with the account to prove that the website is legitimate.
A two-way trust negotiation has now occurred and the account holder can enter their password to establish identity as the account owner. If the password is correct, the account holder will be granted access to the account so that the real interaction can take place. Some websites even store information about the account owner’s primary computer and ask for additional information if he or she attempts to access the account from a different computer. This is simply another layer added to the sequence of establishing trust and a simple illustration to help understand the concept of trust negotiation.
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