Abstract
With the increasing interest in Semantic Web-based applications, researchers have started to build tools enabling organisations to share information. An important aspect in maintaining the Semantic Web is, however, to preserve security during semantic interoperation of different entities. Security and privacy are indispensable to the success of Semantic Web services. Hence, this chapter aims to investigate the currently used security methods in semantic interoperation, including the security methods employing Semantic Web representation languages such as XML, RDF and ontologies, and their application methods in semantic interoperation such as secure access control and secure knowledge management. How to manage privacy, trust and reputation at the same time during semantic interoperation will also be discussed in this chapter. Finally, some directions for our further research will be presented.
TopBackground
The semantic web (Berners-Lee, 2001) is a universal medium to exchange data, information and knowledge. It suggests annotating web resources with machine-processable metadata. The emerging semantic web integrates logical inference, knowledge representation, and technologies of intelligent software agents. With the increasing interest in web-based applications such as electronic commerce, researchers have started to build tools enabling organisations to share information. Most of these tools have not taken into account, however, the important aspect of maintaining the security of the organisations involved and the confidentiality and privacy of data. Therefore, for the semantic web to succeed it is essential to preserve security and privacy during semantic interoperation of different entities.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Security: Syntax for encrypting or decrypting digital content in XML documents, in RDF triples, or in ontology representation languages.
Semantic Web Services: Semantic Web services can be defined as web services whose descriptions are annotated by machine-interpretable ontologies so that other software agents can use them without having any prior ‘built-in’ knowledge about how to invoke them.
Access Control: Access control is a mechanism that allows resource owners to define, manage, and enforce the access conditions for any resource.
Ontology: Ontologies are defined as “explicit conceptualisation(s) of a domain” (Gruber, 1993), and are seen as a key to realise the vision of the semantic web.
Semantic Interoperation: Semantic interoperation and service sharing are used to support collaboration across different enterprise systems.
Trust and Reputation: Trust and reputation is defined as the “subjective expectation an agent has about another’s future behavior based on the history of their encounters”.
Privacy: Portions of a document can be set to private, so that they are invisible during the interoperation process.
Semantic Web: Envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee, the semantic web is a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange. It suggests to annotate web resources with machine-processable metadata.