White Papers

Booz Allen Hamilton: The Three Pillars of Trust

The first decades of the Internet devoted few resources to online trust. According to Internet pioneers, "early networks...were purpose-built-i.e., they were intended for, and largely restricted to, closed communities of scholars...."2 There was no perceived need to engineer trust into the Internet. Today, hundreds of millions of strangers globally use the Internet, which has become an indispensable tool for business and leisure alike. Businesses now devote considerable resources to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of Internet-based transaction systems. Consumers have growing awareness of online risks, but it is hard for them to control all online trust issues when Web sites and social networks automatically splice together a myriad of services that operate mostly "under the hood." Despite best intentions, there are still too many stories of breaches that impede the public's trust in using the Internet for personal business.