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Compliance Issues In Cloud Computing Systems

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Date Issued:
2015
Summary:
Appealing features of cloud services such as elasticity, scalability, universal access, low entry cost, and flexible billing motivate consumers to migrate their core businesses into the cloud. However, there are challenges about security, privacy, and compliance. Building compliant systems is difficult because of the complex nature of regulations and cloud systems. In addition, the lack of complete, precise, vendor neutral, and platform independent software architectures makes compliance even harder. We have attempted to make regulations clearer and more precise with patterns and reference architectures (RAs). We have analyzed regulation policies, identified overlaps, and abstracted them as patterns to build compliant RAs. RAs should be complete, precise, abstract, vendor neutral, platform independent, and with no implementation details; however, their levels of detail and abstraction are still debatable and there is no commonly accepted definition about what an RA should contain. Existing approaches to build RAs lack structured templates and systematic procedures. In addition, most approaches do not take full advantage of patterns and best practices that promote architectural quality. We have developed a five-step approach by analyzing features from available approaches but refined and combined them in a new way. We consider an RA as a big compound pattern that can improve the quality of the concrete architectures derived from it and from which we can derive more specialized RAs for cloud systems. We have built an RA for HIPAA, a compliance RA (CRA), and a specialized compliance and security RA (CSRA) for cloud systems. These RAs take advantage of patterns and best practices that promote software quality. We evaluated the architecture by creating profiles. The proposed approach can be used to build RAs from scratch or to build new RAs by abstracting real RAs for a given context. We have also described an RA itself as a compound pattern by using a modified POSA template. Finally, we have built a concrete deployment and availability architecture derived from CSRA that can be used as a foundation to build compliance systems in the cloud.
Title: Compliance Issues In Cloud Computing Systems.
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Name(s): Yimam, Dereje, author
Fernandez, Eduardo B., Thesis advisor
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Date Created: 2015
Date Issued: 2015
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 173 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: Appealing features of cloud services such as elasticity, scalability, universal access, low entry cost, and flexible billing motivate consumers to migrate their core businesses into the cloud. However, there are challenges about security, privacy, and compliance. Building compliant systems is difficult because of the complex nature of regulations and cloud systems. In addition, the lack of complete, precise, vendor neutral, and platform independent software architectures makes compliance even harder. We have attempted to make regulations clearer and more precise with patterns and reference architectures (RAs). We have analyzed regulation policies, identified overlaps, and abstracted them as patterns to build compliant RAs. RAs should be complete, precise, abstract, vendor neutral, platform independent, and with no implementation details; however, their levels of detail and abstraction are still debatable and there is no commonly accepted definition about what an RA should contain. Existing approaches to build RAs lack structured templates and systematic procedures. In addition, most approaches do not take full advantage of patterns and best practices that promote architectural quality. We have developed a five-step approach by analyzing features from available approaches but refined and combined them in a new way. We consider an RA as a big compound pattern that can improve the quality of the concrete architectures derived from it and from which we can derive more specialized RAs for cloud systems. We have built an RA for HIPAA, a compliance RA (CRA), and a specialized compliance and security RA (CSRA) for cloud systems. These RAs take advantage of patterns and best practices that promote software quality. We evaluated the architecture by creating profiles. The proposed approach can be used to build RAs from scratch or to build new RAs by abstracting real RAs for a given context. We have also described an RA itself as a compound pattern by using a modified POSA template. Finally, we have built a concrete deployment and availability architecture derived from CSRA that can be used as a foundation to build compliance systems in the cloud.
Identifier: FA00004559 (IID)
Degree granted: Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015.
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Includes bibliography.
Subject(s): Biometric identification
Client/server computing -- Security measures
Cloud computing -- Security measures
Computational intelligence
Computer software -- Quality control
Electronic information resources -- Access control
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Sublocation: Digital Library
Links: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004559
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004559
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
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Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.