A transactional-cycle approach to evidence management for dispute resolution

Dispute resolution, a necessary function in electronic commerce, must rely on evidence that includes mechanisms to ensure non-repudiation of actions by the participants. In open systems comprising computer networks, this "non-repudiation service" is one type of security service defined in the ISO/IEC standards. These, as well as other literature, have defined a system framework for such a service. Evidence management is the central part. We propose a new methodology for evidence management with a model using a transactional cycle in which evidence is collected in compliance with the legal concept of chain-of-evidence. Evidence then exists as a set of relevant pieces instead of an atomic item. A case study involving credit-card-over-SSL transactions was used to demonstrate how the model works. Our aim was to present a new approach and show that evidence accountability can be better ensured.