A toolkit for automating compliance in cloud computing services

We present an integrated approach for automating service providers’ compliance with data protection laws and regulations, business and technical requirements in cloud computing. The techniques we propose in particular include: natural-language analysis (of legislative and regulatory texts, and corporate security rulebooks) and extraction of enforceable rules, use of sticky policies, automated policy enforcement and active monitoring of data, particularly in cloud environments. We current work on developing a software tool for semantic annotation and natural-language processing of cloud terms of service and other related policy texts. We describe our implementations of two parts of the proposed toolkit, namely the semantic annotation editor and the EnCoRe policy enforcement framework. We also identify opportunities for future software development in the area of cloud computing compliance.