A Methodology for Cloud Security Risks Management

Abstract

Cloud computing is an extremely attractive model for both the users and the providers of Cloud-based infrastructure, who have their own business angle for using and providing these services. However, as with many business ventures, as the use of Cloud environments grow, the risks and the threats associated with a successful use of the model also increase. Although, the Cloud paradigm is an evolution of grid systems, Clouds have particular threats specific to virtualized and multi-tenant environments, which need to be managed with proper methodologies to ensure that the entire ecosystem is secure. Security consists of three main aspects—availability, integrity and confidentiality—and each of these needs to be considered to make sure that the complete ecosystem is secure. This chapter presents a comprehensive discussion of the concerns associated with the Cloud security depicting the best practices currently used in the industry. This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of these issues with an innovative holistic approach on how to manage and assess security risks for different kinds of Cloud ecosystems which allows documentation as well as design tools which can be in place to monitor security at both deployment and operation phases. The proposed risk methodology approach allows better management and mitigation of security threats when they occur during the service lifecycle of any kind of Cloud ecosystem and Cloud services provision.