Current research on electronic commerce focuses on means for secure and efficient mechanisms for payments, largely supported by cryptographic techniques. Such mechanisms are indeed necessary for e-commerce, but they are not sufficient. Commercial activities are not limited to simple exchange of funds and merchandise between a client and a vendor. They often consist of multi-step transactions, sometimes involving several participants, that need to be carried out in accordance to a certain policy. Such policies may be concerned with issues that do not lend themselves to purely cryptographic treatment, such as: preventing certificates from being duplicated; ensuring that credit card are used only for the specified transactions; guaranteeing that a payment for services is refundable under specified circumstances; securing the privacy and anonymity of clients; providing a degree of fault tolerance; and establishing access control. This project proposes a general mechanism that can be used to formulate and enforce a wide range of such policies for electronic commerce, in a unified, scalable, and easily deployable manner. The policy is to be stated explicitly, and be enforced by a distributed set of trusted generic controllers. This mechanism is based on the concept of ``Law-Governed interaction,'' developed under a current NSF grant.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
9803698
Program Officer
Gregory R. Andrews
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
1998-07-15
Budget End
2003-06-30
Support Year
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
$243,315
Indirect Cost
Name
Rutgers University
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
New Brunswick
State
NJ
Country
United States
Zip Code
08901