Authentication of Service Provider in the Cloud using Distributed Accountability

Cloud computing enables us to use services over Internet whenever we require. A major feature of the cloud services is that user’s data are usually processed by unknown machines to the users, so users afraid of having no control on their own data. This is a barrier to the adoption of cloud services. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a decentralized information accountability framework to keep track of the actual usage of the user’s data in the cloud. In particular, we propose an object-centered approach that enables enclosing our logging mechanism together with users’ data and policies. We leverage the JAR programmable capabilities to both create a dynamic and traveling object, and to ensure that any access to users’ data will trigger authentication and automated logging local to the JARs. To strengthen user’s control, we also provide distributed auditing mechanisms. We provide extensive experimental studies that demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approaches. KeywordsCloud computing, accountability, data sharing. __________________________________________________*****_________________________________________________