Subjective logic-based trust model for fog computing

Abstract Fog computing, a term coined by Cisco, is a new paradigm that extends the capabilities and services of cloud computing to the edge of the network. As a result, fog computing provides better location awareness and reduces the latency that occurs due to the distance between end devices and the cloud, which is a major issue for sensitive applications. Given that fog computing runs software on devices at the edge of the network rather than on the cloud side, it supports real-time smart applications, such as smart homes, smart grids, health data management, and smart vehicular technologies. This study focuses on security and privacy challenges in the fog computing paradigm and proposes a trust mechanism to address data breach, data loss, and denial of service (DoS) and establish a secure environment for fog applications. The novel model based on the subjective logic method calculates the trust value of nodes to determine if a node is a legitimate node or a rogue node. The proposed trust model is implemented on iFogSim simulator and analyzed with multiple fog nodes, which clearly demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed model in providing effective security.