Preliminary Design of a Platform-as-a-Service to Provide Security in Cloud

Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm, widely adopted in distributed and business computing. Nevertheless, the biggest issue with the large adoption of cloud computing is the perception of loss of security and control over resources that are dynamically acquired in the cloud and that reside on remote providers, and the strong integration of security mechanisms into system architectures. This paper deals with the integration of security features into cloud applications by an as-a-service approach, using Service Level Agreements as a means to clearly define rights and constraints of both customers and providers. The goal is to show the main requirements of a platform dedicated to security and to present the global architecture, in terms of components and their interactions, devoted to negotiate, monitor and enforce the security mechanisms to be applied over existing cloud providers.