Towards a Decision Model Based on Trust and Security Risk Management in e-Services

From choosing the daily lunch menu to buying or selling stock options, decisions have to be made every day. In general, due to incomplete information, making a decision carries a risk. Typically, such risks are mitigated through risk management. Research on risk management has received a lot of attention and has led to several standards, models, and scientific theories. However, risk is not the only element involved in the decision process. In a typical e-service environment, the client’s trust in the supplier is of equal importance. Trust, in this case, is a prediction of the client’s reliance on a service to be performed by the supplier. In this paper we formulate a trust reference model and take a first step towards a decision model by combining the trust model with an existing risk model. The decision model is illustrated by an example in the ebanking domain.