Extending Access Management to maintain audit logs in cloud computing

Abstract

considering the most often talked about security risks in cloud computing, like, security and compliance, viability, lack of transparency, reliability and performance issues. Bringing strong auditability in cloud services can reduce these risks to a great extent. Also, auditing, both internally and externally is generally required and sometimes unavoidable looking into the present day competition in the business arena. Auditing in web based and cloud based usage environments focuses mainly on cost of a service which determines the overall expenditure of the user organization. However, the expenditure can be controlled by a collaborative approach between the provider company and the user organization by constantly monitoring the end user access and usage of subscribed cloud services. Though, many cloud providers will claim of having a robust auditable feature, the generic verifiability with sustainable long term recording of usage logs do not exist at all. Certain access management models can be perfectly extended to maintain audit logs for long terms. However, maintaining long term logs certainly has storage implications, especially with larger organizations. The storage implications need to be studied.