A Review of Security Mechanisms for Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

This chapter reviews current technologies used to build secure agents. A wide spectrum of mechanisms to provide security to agent-based systems is provided, giving an overview with the main agent-based systems and agent-oriented tools. An evaluation of security mechanisms is done that identifies security weaknesses. This review covers from the initial approaches to the more recent mechanisms. This analysis draws attention to the fact that these systems have traditionally neglected the need of a secure underlying infrastructure.