Trustworthy Cloud Federation Through Cooperative Game Using QoS Assessment

Abstract

Growing demand for cloud applications has imposed a great challenge for users in finding a suitable cloud service providers. Trustworthy cloud computing has been a promising solution for effectively judging a secure provider by monitoring the behavior of the environment. However, designing an efficient mechanism for identifying a trustworthy cloud service provider has been a problem in this heterogeneous cloud. In this paper, we address the problem through the game theoretic approach by classifying the providers, based on how they cooperate to form a coalition. Trustable characteristics like sharing of information, the formation of network community, and other quality of service parameters ensure a highly trustworthy service. These functions form the element of cooperative game theory for sharing the payoffs in a manner that a federation through coalition gets benefited. The model proves that there exists an equilibrium, where the property of core, exits and hence, any mistrusted members wishing to break the coalition are nullified.