Risk-based Dynamic Access Control for a Highly Scalable Cloud Federation

Cloud Computing is already a successful paradigm for distributed computing and is still growing in popularity. However, many problems still linger in the application of this model and some new ideas are emerging to help leverage its features even further. One of these ideas is the cloud federation, which is a way of aggregating different clouds to enable the sharing of resources and increase scalability and availability. One of the great challenges in the deployment of cloud federations is Identity and Access Management. This issue is usually solved by the creation of identity federations, but this approach is not optimal. In this paper, we propose an access control system for a highly scalable cloud federation. The presented system is dynamic and risk-based, allowing the use of cloud federations without the need of identity federations. We also present results of a prototype implementation and show that it is scalable and flexible enough to meet the requirements of this highly dynamic and heterogeneous environment. Keywordscloud computing; access control; risk; cloud