Validating cloud infrastructure changes by cloud audits

Abstract

One characteristic of a cloud computing infrastructure are their frequently changing virtual infrastructure. New Virtual Machines (VMs) get deployed, existing VMs migrate to a different host or network segment and VMs vanish since they get deleted by their user. Classic incidence monitoring mechanisms are not flexible enough to cope with cloud specific characteristics such as frequent infrastructure changes. In this paper we present a prototype demonstration of the Security Audit as a Service (SAaaS) architecture, a cloud audit system which aims to increase trust in cloud infrastructures by introducing more transparency to user and cloud provider on what is happening in the cloud. Especially in the event of a changing infrastructure the demonstration shows, how autonomous agents detect this change, automatically re-evaluate the security status of the cloud and inform the user through an audit report. © 2012 IEEE.