Secure Community Trust Stores for Peer-to-Peer e-Commerce Applications Using Cloud Services

Abstract

P2P e-commerce applications have lower operational costs and inherently more scalable than conventional client-server online trading. Community Trust Stores (CTS) provide reliable and secure storage services for peers involved in P2P e-trading by storing trust data for the peers. Freely available cloud services can host the Community Trust Store and provide 24/7 availability to participating trading peers avoiding the need to pay for commercial trusted third party services. However, the community store must provide a certain level of assurance and support suitable security measures in order to support e-trading within the P2P application. It must also support community management of the store including jointly signed trading contract. The Community Trust Stores also stores reputation report and trading outcomes as future reference for others. New membership for P2P e-commerce group must be sponsored by current members.