A resource-efficient integrity monitoring and response approach for cloud computing environment

Abstract

Cloud computing has an immense need of file monitoring techniques to be applied so that system-specific configuration files are not modified by the virtual machine users or cloud insiders/outsiders for carrying out unwanted operations such as privilege escalation or system misconfiguration. The article critically describes the previous work done in the area of file monitoring and why there is a need for lightweight and efficient mechanism for its deployment in cloud. A centralized cum distributed approach for file monitoring of VMs on a host in cloud and the initial outcomes of its execution are presented in this article. The scheme does not use any database for storing file integrity, which eventually results in increased computational and storage efficiency. The technique is presented for the use by admins for ensuring integrity of specific files at VM hosts but can be upgraded to provide support to user-specified files as well.