Novel efficient techniques for real-time cloud security assessment

The recent increase in the use of cloud service has led to the need for cloud service broker(CSB) for supporting the use of various cloud computing platforms. CSB plays the role of not only providing overall services needed for individuals and companies to use cloud computing but also managing and inspecting them. As cloud computing became commonplace, it is expected that the demand for more useful cloud-based service at more affordable prices will increase exponentially. Accordingly, the current situation calls for CSB that connects cloud service provider & customer and provides the service of managing and inspecting cloud service. This paper presents a framework of the components and role of cloud service broker system that supports the allocation, control and management of virtual system based on brokering function between cloud service provider(CSP) and cloud service customer (CSC) by integrating and managing cloud resources in multiple heterogeneous cloud environment. Based on this, it is expected that this paper will contribute to the revitalization of cloud service industry.

Cloud Security is still considered one of the main factors inhibiting the diffusion of the Cloud Computing paradigm. Potential Cloud Service Customers (CSCs) do not trust delegating every kind of resources and data to external Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). The problem grows in complexity due to the increasing adoption of complex supply chains: CSPs that offer Sofware-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud services often do not have their own data centers, but just acquire resources and services from other CSPs. This makes ithard, if not impossible, to ascribe the responsibility of a securityincident. A possible solution is the adoption of Security ServiceLevel Agreements (SLAs): CSPs should deliver services withan SLA that details each guarantee offered in terms of security, and CSCs should be able to compare offerings from differentCSPs and verify that SLAs are respected during service lifecycle. This paper shows how it is possible to build up a per-serviceSecurity SLA in a chain of cloud services, proposing asolution based on a security evaluation technique to comparedifferent cloud service supply chains based on their SecuritySLAs.

In the cloud computing context, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are contracts between Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Cloud Service Customers (CSCs), stating the guaranteed quality level of the services offered by CSPs. Existing cloud SLAs focus only on few service terms, completely ignoring all security related aspects. They are often reported in a way that is hardly understandable for customers. Moreover, they offer guarantees uniform for all offered services and all customers, regardless of particular service characteristics or customers specific needs. This paper presents a framework that enables the adoption of a per-service SLA model, by supporting the automatic implementation of cloud Security SLAs tailored to the needs of each customer for specific service instances. In particular, the process and the software architecture for per-service SLA implementation are shown. A case study application demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Digital forensics is the study of discovering evidence pertaining to digital crimes & attacks. To monitor and investigate cloud-based crimes, Cloud Forensics (CF) operates as a subfield of Digital Forensics. Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving, worldwide network of interconnected servers. Therefore, Cloud Forensics belongs to Network Forensics, which is a subset of Digital Forensics. There is yet to be an overt forensic revolution in the cloud service, which includes cloud businesses, cloud service providers, & cloud service customers. They cannot guarantee the security of their system or quality of their services that aid in criminal & cybercrime investigations without this crucial forensic capacity. This research study analyzes the forensics procedure, the difficulties of CF, and the tools available to help the investigation. In the context of Blockchain Technology (BT), the approaches to solutions and future possibilities of CF have been outlined. These investigations will pave the path for future scholars to have a deeper grasp of the difficulties and develop innovative solutions.

Cloud paradigm is currently one of the most remunerative segments of Information Technology. It has gained the interest of a very large number of corporates and organizations. However, despite the promising features, security is the major concern for businesses that want to shift their services to the cloud. On the other hand, business critical systems must be certified against a set of security controls to be compliant to security standards, as well as to mitigate potential security incidents. Therefore, cloud service providers must employ adequate security measures that conform to security controls expected by the information systems they host; moreover, they should be able to grant the correct application of such controls to their customers. Security service level agreements (SLAs) are a way to face such issues, through the definition of contracts among cloud service providers and customers that clearly state the security grants applied to the offered cloud services. This chapter illustrates a case study that describes how it is possible to implement such security SLAs on a concrete cloud service, which offers Apache Hadoop services over public cloud providers. The chapter outlines how to write and assess security SLAs on such services.

Combinatorial bi-level optimization remains a challenging topic, especially when the lower-level is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we tackle large-scale and combinatorial bi-level problems using GP hyper-heuristics, i.e., an approach that permits to train heuristics like a machine learning model. Our contribution aims at targeting the intensive and complex lower-level optimizations that occur when solving a large-scale and combinatorial bi-level problem. For this purpose, we consider hyper-heuristics through heuristic generation. Using a GP hyper-heuristic approach, we train greedy heuristics in order to make them more reliable when encountering unseen lower-level instances that could be generated during bi-level optimization. To validate our approach referred to as GA+AGH, we tackle instances from the bi-level cloud pricing optimization problem (BCPOP) that model the trading interactions between a cloud service provider and cloud service customers. Numerical results demonstrate the abilities of the trained heuristics to cope with the inherent nested structure that makes bi-level optimization problems so hard. Furthermore, it has been shown that training heuristics for lower-level optimization permits to outperform human-based heuristics and metaheuristics which constitute an excellent outcome for bi-level optimization.

Cloud storage provides great benefits and advantages like reduction in cost, increased flexibility, elasticity and the efficient use of resources. With these great advantages, there are concerns and problem for cloud users. Some obstacles in using cloud computing services are because of its distributed and untransparent nature. That's why users have no control over their data and information and are not sure of whether or not to trust cloud providers. Therefore, the objective of this research is to examine the influence of customer and provider characteristics on cloud service outcome, impact of Trust on cloud service outcome, and to examine if Trust mediate the relationship of customer characteristics and provider’s characteristics with cloud service outcome. In order to achieve the objectives of this research, the analyses of measurement model, factor analysis, assessment of structure model and regression analysis has been conducted. The Findings of this study shows that the existing threats in cloud service is one of the reason why users are not trusting cloud service providers. These threats which are privacy and security cause unwillingness to use cloud services. This study also found that Trust plays an enormous role for cloud service users and providers because it increases usage, willingness to use among customers, and reputation of cloud service providers. It also found that Outcome is really low if there is no trust in these services. This study will help cloud service providers/developers to know the reasons why some people and organizations are not willing to use their services.

Data Portability: Key to Cloud Portability and Interoperability

Cloud Computing is the recent technology that is based on shared pool of resources and provides features like Ubiquitous access, multi-tenancy, flexibility, scalability and pay as you use, which makes it more resource efficient and cost effective. But Cloud-based systems open unfamiliar threats in authentication and authorization. Explicit authorization accordance must be defined at smallest level, especially in multi-tenant environments. The liaison between Cloud Service Provider & customer must also be clearly mentioned in relation like who holds administrative rights and indirect access to privileged customer information. Moreover the scenario of cloud in educational and research community is still developing and has some security concerns. This paper provides a brief review about Cloud Security concerns for adoption of cloud computing in data sensitive research and technology aided education. Also this paper proposes, ECK based framework for securing end-user data in Community Cloud. Implications and considerations for additional research are provided as well.

In the cloud computing context, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) 'tailored' to specific Cloud Service Customers (CSCs) seem to be still an utopia, and things are even worse as regards the security terms to be guaranteed. In fact, existing cloud SLAs focus only on a few service terms, and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) mainly provide uniform guarantees for all offered services and for all customers, regardless of any particular service characteristics or of customer-specific needs. This paper presents a framework that enables the adoption of a per-service SLA model, supporting the automatic implementation of cloud security SLAs tailored to the needs of each customer for specific service instances. In particular, the process and the software architecture for per-service SLA implementation are shown. A case study application, related to the provisioning of a secure web container service, is presented and discussed, to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Cloud computing is currently the most hyped and popular paradigm in the domain of distributed computing. Multiple vendors are providing infrastructure, platform, and software-related cloud products or solutions, and the number of such vendors is growing rapidly. But the reality is that there is very little in the form of standards in general and interoperability standards in particular. This leads to a challenging situation for cloud service consumers as they need to use solutions provided by multiple cloud vendors in order to fulfill their business requirements, and the lack of standardization leads to lack of interoperability among the solutions provided by varied vendors. Service brokers act as intermediaries between the cloud service providers and consumers. The role of service brokers becomes critical in situations that need integration among multiple systems as they bridge the interoperability gaps among multiple cloud solutions and thus compensate for the lack of standards. They do so by acting as agents adding value on behalf of the service consumers. The usage of such cloud brokers also helps to future-proof the solution as service brokers add a layer of indirection, thus enabling loose coupling among the cloud service consumers and providers. The aim of this chapter is to review the role of cloud service brokers in cloud computing. The review includes consolidation of the definitions and characteristics of cloud service brokers, review of the current brokerage solutions, and interfacing requirements. Also presented are a high-level cloud service broker functional architecture, criteria for selection of a cloud service broker, future trends and review of benefits, and challenges of using cloud service brokers.

The emergence of cloud computing has completely changed the entire IT world. There is no doubt that making a profit is a cloud service provider (CSP)’s ultimate goal. To make a profit, a CSP needs a reasonable pricing strategy. At the same time, in order to increase the attractiveness of cloud service, CSPs tend to write default clauses in the service level agreement (SLA) and the default cost will affect the profit of CSPs. To determine an optimal pricing strategy, this paper builds some bi-level programming models of CSPs and users. The basic model does not consider default compensation and the default cost is included in the extended model. Finally, the comparison results of the two models prove that it is significant for the CSP to set default compensation clauses.

Cloud computing has emerged as a new computing paradigm, with provisioning model generally consisting of cloud service providers (CSPs), network service providers (NSPs), and end users. The associated economics has opened up a new research area; and with the expansion of the cloud computing market, the relationship between CSPs and NSPs, is changing profoundly. In addition to providing the default network services, traditional NSPs, in attempt to compete with CSPs, have started offering cloud services to end users. Though much progress has been made toward addressing competitions among CSPs themselves or among NSPs themselves, few studies have focused on the competition between CSPs and NSPs. In this paper, we investigate the problem of insufficient studies on the competition between CSPs and NSPs by presenting a new economic model to characterize the competition between CSPs and NSPs, and by conducting thorough theoretical analysis as well as numeric experiments to validate the proposed model. We believe, based on results, that the proposed economic model is general and feasible, and thus is applicable to modeling the competition among service providers in cloud computing market.

In the current technological era, the use of computers becomes an essential part of our life. The Internet has been become as mandatory in the human-being life. The cloud computing has the potential to transform the current static Internet into a fully integrated future Internet. It is a style of computing in which resources are provided “as a service” to users who need not have knowledge or expertise and or control over the infrastructure. The cloud computing technology has become a popular and necessary in the present decade. The cloud computing is the way of sharing resources for the use of various resources via the internet. Hence there are many cloud service providers are competing with each other in order to provide cloud services to the cloud users. In fact, the growth of cloud users has been increased tremendously from last decade to the present decade. In directives to provide right cloud service to users is aimed at almost all cloud service providers. The cloud service providers are also increasing many features of their cloud service products to attract the cloud service users. But cloud service users are facing difficulties to select the right service from a pool of cloud services. Hence it has become necessary for cloud service users to evaluate cloud services and select the best one, for this purpose a new evaluation model has been proposed in this paper based on data mining Fuzzy clustering algorithm.

Multi objective trust aware task scheduling algorithm in cloud computing using whale optimization