A4Cloud workshop: Accountability in the cloud

Abstract

As cloud computing becomes a widely used technology, it is essential to provide mechanisms and tools that enable trust about how personal data is dealt with by cloud providers. The Cloud Accountability (A4Cloud) project tries to solve the problem of ensuring trust in the cloud by providing tools that support the process of achieving accountability. In this paper we will concentrate on some specific tools that were demonstrated and discussed during the A4Cloud workshop held in association with the IFIP Privacy Summer School in Edinburgh in 2015. In particular, we will describe tools that facilitate the appropriate choice of a cloud provider such as the Cloud Offerings Advisory Tool (COAT) and the Data Protection Impact Assessment Tool (DPIAT), tools that are in charge of controlling the data of the users such as the Data Track (DT) tool, and tools that help specify and enforce accountability related policies by using the Accountability-Primelife Policy Language (A-PPL) and an associated enforcement engine.