Trustworthy selection of cloud providers based on security and privacy requirements: Justifying trust assumptions

Abstract

Cloud computing is a new paradigm with a promising potential. However, issues of security, privacy, and trust raise concerns and discourage its adoption. In previous work we presented a framework for the selection of appropriate cloud provider based on security and privacy requirements criteria. However, the adoption of cloud includes release of control over valuable assets, which constitutes trust in the cloud provider of paramount importance. In this paper we extend the framework by incorporating trust and control concepts in its language and adding a new activity to properly identify and reason about trust assumptions during the selection of appropriate cloud provider. Also, the CASE tool was extended to support the new activity. A case study is used to illustrate the usefulness of our approach. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.