Elements of Cloud Storage Security: Concepts, Designs and Optimized Practices

Abstract

This book is a result of scientific and industrial collaboration in the field of cloud protection. It provides guidelines for the practical implementation of security archi-tecture in a particular corporate cloud. The authors are mathematicians and special-ists in data modeling and security. The scientific collaboration with the industry inspired the authors to attempt to conceptualize the common processes and strate-gies in cloud security in order to make the security system deployment as simple and transparent as possible. The deployment is broken in several essential steps that allow splitting the functionality of the security architecture of any cloud into a set of modules. The first step is the level of architecture where the authentication and key establishment procedures are identified. The second step provides the support of the authorization and other additional security mechanisms for each component of the cloud. The continuous verification of security support on all levels (data, processes, and communication channels) allows avoiding the common security breaches and protecting against the most dangerous attacks at maximum. Additionally, it is proposed to perform the optimization of the selected set of mechanisms in order to intensify the efficiency of the security system.