Reputation-Based Trust for a Cooperative Agent-Based Backup Protection Scheme

This paper explores integrating a reputation-based trust mechanism with an agent-based backup protection system to help protect against malicious or byzantine failures. A distributed cooperative trust system has the potential to add an additional layer of protection designed to operate with greater autonomy. This trust component enables the agents in the system to make assessments using an estimate of the trustworthiness of cooperating protection agents based on their responsiveness and the consistency of their responses when compared with their peers. Results illustrate the improved decision-making capability of agents who incorporate this cooperative trust method in the presence of failures in neighboring relays.