Cloud Computing Security Requirements and Solutions: a Systematic Literature Review

Although the technology and its application are not new, the rising awareness and implementations of cloud services and its underlying technologies cause the need for security requirements being up to date. Cloud computing security requirements have been addressed in publications earlier, but it is still difficult to estimate what kinds of requirements have been researched most, and which are still under-researched. This paper carries out a systematic literature review by identifying cloud computing security requirements from publications between January 2011 and March 2013. It will categorize these requirements in a framework and assess their frequency of research. The paper will then identify changes in the assessment of requirements and proposed solutions compared to publications prior to 2011. It has been found that the most researched sub-factors of security requirements are: Access Control, Data Integrity and Privacy & Confidentiality. Most under-researched areas are Recovery and Prosecution, with Non-repudiation and Physical Protection closely followed. Various improvements and nested methodologies in current approaches were identified rather than new solutions.