Multi-tier Authentication for Cloud Security

Abstract

Cloud computing is one of the latest fields of Computer Science Engineering that deals with providing services to the users of the system/network as per their requirements and on pay-per-use basis. It provides a simple, flexible, heterogeneous, and architecture-neutral platform from where the user can access the desired services with ease. It can be considered as a modified form of distributed computing. The entire operation of cloud computing is based on Internet; hence, we can consider it as Internet-based computing. Security for cloud systems is an important factor that ensures trust between the cloud service provider and the users. As cloud provides a centralized repository where all services and resources reside, it is very important to ensure the authorized access to them. As cloud is based on Pay-per-Use model, it is necessary that the user should access only those services and resources for which they had subscribed. Any type of unauthorized access will lead to some type of loss. In this paper, a technique to ensure authorized access by users to cloud resources and services has been proposed, so as to overcome the above-stated issues.