Uniform Service Description and Contextual Access Control for Trustworthy Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing (CC) is a paradigm of providing services to a variety of clients, individuals, and organizations, through a large-scale distributed computing environment. It is a shared pool of resources that are dynamically configured to meet demands and provide reliable and rapid services, with minimal management required from the clients. The number of enterprises and individuals using both public and private CC services is steadily increasing, yet there is a deep concern about the security risks of embedding their assets in cloud. Research on CC security has only revealed the necessity to improve security, with no consensus yet on a sound methodology at CC level for achieving a satisfactory level of trust of CC clients. This paper contributes to this area of research by offering two proposals. The first proposal is a uniform CC service model to earn trust of clients. The second proposal is the application of Context-sensitive Role-Based Access Control (CRBAC) method for establishing identity, and enforcing security and privacy in CC service transactions.