Security Issues and Future Challenges of Cloud Service Authentication

Authentication, in the cloud context, is the process of validating and guaranteeing the identity of cloud service subscribers or users. It is deemed essential since its strength directly impacts the reliability and security of the cloud computing environment. Many efforts, within in the literature, have surveyed cloud security and privacy, but lack a detailed analysis of authentication for the cloud. In view of the research gap and the importance of a valid authentication infrastructure, this survey critically investigates different authentication strategies and frameworks proposed for cloud services. This paper discusses the pros and cons of different authentication strategies and presents the taxonomy of the state-of-the-art cloud service authentication. The paper concludes with the open issues, main challenges and directions highlighted for future work in this relevant area.