Trusted Dynamic Coalitions
Lead Research Organisation:
Newcastle University
Department Name: Computing Sciences
Abstract
Businesses are finding more and more ways to take advantage of the
internet, and can they can reduce costs and increase their sales by going
online. Communication across continents is easier than ever before, and so
they can also use the internet to work together. Smaller specialist
companies can now compete with large multinationals by
working together to distribute sub-tasks of the work to companies
specialist in that sub-task. They have then created a "virtual
organisation" -- an increasingly common mode of working.
Virtual organisations also form when organisations, military forces
and bystanders put aside differences and work together to alleviate
the consequences of a major disaster. One of the characteristics of
these virtual organisations is that they are highly fluid -- as the
situation on the ground changes, partners and the trust between them
changes, structures change and even the purpose of the virtual
organisation can change. In the military sphere, virtual
organisations such as these are known as dynamic coalitions.
A problem virtual organisations face is that the members often do not
trust one another. They may be competitors for the most part, and
only working together on a single job, and so there will naturally be
information that they are not prepared to disclose to potential
competitors.
In a virtual organisation, partners need to take action based on the
information they receive from other partners. This presents a problem,
because the information may not be trustworthy. To increase their
confidence that they are taking the right action, there are some
things a partner can do. They can ask the sender for more details
about the information itself, such as its source or age (known as the
provenance of the information), but these details can often give away
organisation or government secrets, and partners are naturally not
keen to release them. They could try to verify the information
themselves or via a third party, but these activities take time and
in situations such as disaster response, speed is an
important factor.
We wish to enable a partner to increase their confidence that they are
taking the right action in a virtual organisation. We will do this
by providing methods and tools that help partners to choose the
virtual organisation policies so that the desire for provenance data
and the desire for secrecy are held in balance.
We will look particularly at the provenance acquisition policy,
which states what provenance information is associated with
communications within the virtual organisation, and the provenance use
policy, which states the action that a partner will take on receipt of
information with a certain provenance associated to it.
Choosing the right combination of policies here is critical to the
success of a virtual organisation, and this choice must be made and
re-made as the partners, trust relationships and goals of the virtual
organisation change.
We will build mathematical models of the policies and the virtual
organisation itself, and a tool to allow partners to interact with
these models (without their needing to understand the models) to
predict the impact of changes to these policies in terms both of the
secrecy requirements within the virtual organisation and their ability
to have confidence in the information they receive. This will help in
the choice of provenance policies both at the start of a virtual
organisation and throughout its lifetime.
internet, and can they can reduce costs and increase their sales by going
online. Communication across continents is easier than ever before, and so
they can also use the internet to work together. Smaller specialist
companies can now compete with large multinationals by
working together to distribute sub-tasks of the work to companies
specialist in that sub-task. They have then created a "virtual
organisation" -- an increasingly common mode of working.
Virtual organisations also form when organisations, military forces
and bystanders put aside differences and work together to alleviate
the consequences of a major disaster. One of the characteristics of
these virtual organisations is that they are highly fluid -- as the
situation on the ground changes, partners and the trust between them
changes, structures change and even the purpose of the virtual
organisation can change. In the military sphere, virtual
organisations such as these are known as dynamic coalitions.
A problem virtual organisations face is that the members often do not
trust one another. They may be competitors for the most part, and
only working together on a single job, and so there will naturally be
information that they are not prepared to disclose to potential
competitors.
In a virtual organisation, partners need to take action based on the
information they receive from other partners. This presents a problem,
because the information may not be trustworthy. To increase their
confidence that they are taking the right action, there are some
things a partner can do. They can ask the sender for more details
about the information itself, such as its source or age (known as the
provenance of the information), but these details can often give away
organisation or government secrets, and partners are naturally not
keen to release them. They could try to verify the information
themselves or via a third party, but these activities take time and
in situations such as disaster response, speed is an
important factor.
We wish to enable a partner to increase their confidence that they are
taking the right action in a virtual organisation. We will do this
by providing methods and tools that help partners to choose the
virtual organisation policies so that the desire for provenance data
and the desire for secrecy are held in balance.
We will look particularly at the provenance acquisition policy,
which states what provenance information is associated with
communications within the virtual organisation, and the provenance use
policy, which states the action that a partner will take on receipt of
information with a certain provenance associated to it.
Choosing the right combination of policies here is critical to the
success of a virtual organisation, and this choice must be made and
re-made as the partners, trust relationships and goals of the virtual
organisation change.
We will build mathematical models of the policies and the virtual
organisation itself, and a tool to allow partners to interact with
these models (without their needing to understand the models) to
predict the impact of changes to these policies in terms both of the
secrecy requirements within the virtual organisation and their ability
to have confidence in the information they receive. This will help in
the choice of provenance policies both at the start of a virtual
organisation and throughout its lifetime.
Planned Impact
Direct impact will come from activities that will be carried out throughout the project. They include:
* Consistent engagement with Dstl. Our collaboration with Dstl will ensure that the project's outcomes will be tested on DC use cases that are of relevance to the security and defense community;
* Dissemination activities both at the academic level and beyond, including leveraging other EPSRC funded projects, to which the School of Computing is associated;
* Independent engagement of project members with standardization bodies within the provenance management community.
These activities are further detailed in the Pathway to Impact document, one section of which is devoted specifically to impact in the defence community.
One of the immediate goals of the project is to provide initial insight into the data privacy/transparency tension that characterises partner interactions in the context of Dynamic Coalitions where trust levels may vary, namely the need for information privacy on one side, against the need for rich metadata disclosure, on the other. Our goal is to provide the technical underpinning on which a framework can be built, by which partners can take account of the available trade-offs in this space, while negotiating partnership agreements. This has the potential to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of the coalition, as well as the risk management capability of each of the partners with respect to data privacy.
* Consistent engagement with Dstl. Our collaboration with Dstl will ensure that the project's outcomes will be tested on DC use cases that are of relevance to the security and defense community;
* Dissemination activities both at the academic level and beyond, including leveraging other EPSRC funded projects, to which the School of Computing is associated;
* Independent engagement of project members with standardization bodies within the provenance management community.
These activities are further detailed in the Pathway to Impact document, one section of which is devoted specifically to impact in the defence community.
One of the immediate goals of the project is to provide initial insight into the data privacy/transparency tension that characterises partner interactions in the context of Dynamic Coalitions where trust levels may vary, namely the need for information privacy on one side, against the need for rich metadata disclosure, on the other. Our goal is to provide the technical underpinning on which a framework can be built, by which partners can take account of the available trade-offs in this space, while negotiating partnership agreements. This has the potential to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of the coalition, as well as the risk management capability of each of the partners with respect to data privacy.
Publications
Danger R
(2015)
Access control and view generation for provenance graphs
in Future Generation Computer Systems
Missier P.
(2015)
ProvAbs: model, policy, and tooling for abstracting PROV graphs
Description | We have proposed models for abstracting provenance graphs into a form that selectively obfuscates information to non-authorised parties. This obfuscation process preserves the semantics properties (PROV constraints) of the original graph, making it a "closed" algebraic operation: a view on a PROV graph can itself be abstracted again, recursively. This is likely to have impact not only in disciplines where the confidentiality of the provenance content is important, but also the use of provenance by humans is limited by the complexity of the graph stucture. Thus, we have achieved our main goal of providing potential users with a principled and well-defined model for abstacting provenance, along with a prototype implementation of the algorithm and a policy model to drive its execution. |
Exploitation Route | we have received follow on funding by the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) to exploit our algorithm in the context of multi-agencies emergency response. |
Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Environment,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology,Security and Diplomacy |
Description | ONRG -- Office of Naval Research Global responsive mode |
Amount | $146,000 (USD) |
Organisation | ONRG Office of Naval Research Global |
Sector | Public |
Country | United States |
Start | 05/2017 |
End | 05/2020 |
Title | ProvAbs tool has been implemented and is currently being enhanced |
Description | provAbs enables researchers to inspect large provenance traces so that they are not overwhelmed by the complexity of the provenance graph. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2015 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | not yet released |
Description | Collaboration with Imperial College, London |
Organisation | Imperial College London |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | BH122351 - Research collaboration on the topic of privacy in provenance, in the context of the 'Trusted Dynamic Coalitions' EPSRC project. The award allowed us to establish a new collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Computing, Imperial College (IC) London (Dr. Vasa Curcin), to pursue common research interests in the area of data provenance management. This originated from our DaISy grant on Trusted Dynamic Coalitions and translated into multiple visits to IC. The collaboration addresses the novel and timely issue of policy-controlled partial disclosure of data provenance. |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | Collaboration with the DSTL |
Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Our research was co-funded by the EPSRC and the DSTL. The research contributed to the DSTL's understanding of issues of data and metadata privacy in the context of intelligence information exchange |
Collaborator Contribution | DSTL provided us with case studies, feedback on our research direction, and validation of the results. This was manifested through workshops held at DSTL as well as periodic visits to our School by DSTL personnel. |
Impact | - presentation given at a dedicated DSTL workshop - final presentation of research results at the Defence Implications of Emerging Technologies Programme (DIET) Market Place Event, 6th June 2013 |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | joint funding project with Heriot-Watt |
Organisation | Heriot-Watt University |
Department | School of Engineering & Physical Sciences |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | successful joint grant proposal -- project currently in progress (CEM-DIT) |
Collaborator Contribution | contribution to joint proposal |
Impact | none yet -- papers in progress |
Start Year | 2015 |
Title | the ProvAbs tool |
Description | tool to generate abstract views from complex provenance graphs |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2015 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | n/a |
Description | Trusted Dynamic Coalitions - marketplace event for policy makers, members of the defense and intelligence community |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Presentation to an audience of decision makers in the Defense and Intelligence area, as well as other academic peers in areas related to this research. The talk generated substantial interest from the DSTL and members of the community. This stimulated talks about possible practical applicaitons as well as further funding. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |