Currently, there is an increasing tendency to migrate the management of communications and information systems onto the Web. This is making many traditional service support models obsolete. In addition, current security mechanisms are not sufficiently robust to protect each management system and/or subsystem from web-based intrusions, malware, and hacking attacks. This paper presents research challenges in autonomic management to provide self-protection mechanisms and tools by using trust and

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... putation concepts based on policybased management to decentralize management decisions. This work also uses user-based reputation mechanisms to help enforce trust management in pervasive and communications services. The scope of this research is founded in social models, where the application of trust and reputation applied in communication systems helps detect potential users as well as hackers attempting to corrupt management operations and services. These so-called "cheating services" act as "attacks", altering the performance and the security in communication systems by consumption of computing or network resources unnecessarily. Social relationships are built based on the trust between people. Computing and communications systems are now aiming to take advantage of such models and then use the concepts of reputation and trust to, for example, offer secure information services and networking applications. In computing, trust management has been adopted as a way to enable security for distributed systems in situations where there is risk in making decisions. Hence, trust management systems must offer certain guarantees to securing information, as well as the processes that create, manage distribute, and govern information and services, in a reliable and efficient manner.