Data confidentiality and information credibility in online ecosystems

Recent ICTs paradigms such as cloud computing, data outsourcing, digital data markets, and the spread of multiple social media based on Web 2.0 technologies, facilitate the exchange of large data and information flows among a myriad of interconnected devices and users, for different aims and purposes. This complex scenario underlies the development of online ecosystems of interacting entities, where the concepts of community, self-organization, evolution and knowledge are fundamental. While the benefits connected to such kind of ecosystems are intuitive also to the everyday man, no lunch comes for free, and such a complex and interconnected scenario entails a number of issues connected to both data and information generation and diffusion that should be carefully addressed. For example, in the data sharing context, genuine data could be manipulated, tampered with, accessed without permission, breached, or improperly disclosed; in the Social Web context, low-quality data and/or misinformation could be diffused. With respect to the above-mentioned issues, in this paper we survey some of the possible approaches proposed in the literature for ensuring adequate data protection, with particular reference to data confidentiality, and for assessing information credibility in complex online environments. We also provide a conclusive discussion aimed at illustrating the importance of relating these concepts.