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Trust across Disciplines

Security and privacy in trust - Our socio-cognitive approach

Generally, when an environment is secure it is easier to build trust relations within it. Equally, if someone shows he is careful with our personal data or sensible infomation, he could be seen as trustworthy.

It is what most of the people tend to believe: trust is the result of security (when there is security I can trust, or I should trust because something is safe). This is not a correct theory though because trust is a far more wide concept and its link with security is not so linear.

First of all trust is not derived from security: a secure environment is not sufficient to provide trust and even worse trust could be damaged if the security is pushed too far by an invasive technology. Moreover the mere security can play a little role in the beliefs architecture of any agent, because it is far more important to consider the perceived security, which is quite independent from the actual security gained technologically.

Security is one of the trust sources but they are distinct entities. To reduce all the complex issues of trust to the mere technical solutions which are able to protect users' communications through Internet is a very limited perspective.

The technical systems developed by computer science are useful for security and privacy management bt are not sufficient for building trust, which is a cognitive entity.

References

Ulivieri, F. (2004). Naive Approaches to Trust Building in Web Technologies. ISTC technical report. Electronic version available.

You may also want to read the Trust, security and technology page of our Trust theory. More information about the role of technology in trust related matters can be found in the Trust & Technology page within this map.

Other perspectives on security and privacy

These topics are studied also in economics and computer science.