Managing the allocation of cloud virtual machines at physical resources is a key requirement for the success of clouds. Current implementations of cloud schedulers do not consider the entire cloud infrastructure neither do they consider the overall user and infrastructure properties. This results in major security, privacy, and resilience concerns. In this paper, we propose a novel cloud scheduler which considers both user requirements and infrastructure properties. We focus on assuring users that their virtual resources are hosted using physical resources that match their requirements without getting users involved with understanding the details of the cloud infrastructure. As a proof-of-concept, we present our prototype which is built on OpenStack. The provided prototype implements the proposed cloud scheduler. It also provides an implementation of our previous work on cloud trust management which provides the scheduler with input about the trust status of the cloud infrastructure.

Establishing trust between remote entities is an important subject which has been widely discussed in academia and industry. The most commonly known solution attempting to address this problem, which has been adopted by industry, is the one proposed as part of TCG specifications (known as remote attestation). Establishing remote attestation in Clouds is critical for its success. However, remote attestation as proposed by TCG is impractical in Cloud due to Clouds' complexity and dynamism. This paper clarifies this important subject, and proposes novel methods which help in providing remote attestation in the context of Clouds environment.

Cloud infrastructure is expected to support Internet scale critical applications (e.g. hospital systems and smart grid systems). Critical infrastructure and even organizations will not outsource their critical resources on public Cloud without strong assurance about the trustworthiness of the Cloud Infrastructure. In this paper we focus on an important angle in this direction, which is about providing assurance to Cloud users about the trustworthiness of service delivery in a Cloud's environment (it is also known as operational trust). Specifically, we focus on analyzing the most important Clouds' properties, which enable different interested parties to assess the operational trust of a Cloud provider for delivering services. The assessment of operational trust enables Cloud users, auditors, collaborating Cloud providers, and others to compare multiple Cloud providers and decide on the best value for money. It also enables Cloud providers to understand what could be done to improve the level of services.

Clouds are composed of enormous resources and are associated with attractive properties, e.g. scalability and resilience. Such properties are the result of Clouds dynamic nature. Cloud dynamism is desirable property for different reasons such as resilience, resource consolidation, and maintenance windows. However, such dynamism exposes many security and management concerns for Cloud providers as well as for Cloud users. For example how can Cloud providers assure users that: (a.) dependent applications running on different VMs (Virtual Machines) are hosted within physical proximity (performance reasons); (b.) mutually exclusive VMs are not hosted at the same physical server (e.g. availability and security reasons); and (c.) when migrating VMs the new allocated physical servers satisfy users application requirements and security and privacy criteria. In this paper we explore this important problem. We then propose a framework, which at this foundation stage focuses on providing secure environment for the management of Clouds' virtual layer. It also helps in establishing trust in Cloud's operational management. We also propose our planned implementation layout using Open Stack.

This paper is concerned about insiders and analyzing their threats in organizations. We start by deriving a novel definition of insiders, and identifying the criteria distinguishing insiders from potential insiders. The paper then discusses the main organization types, process workflow, and then derives their requirements. We analyze one of the major threats which affect secure information sharing, which is the content leakage threat that is caused by insiders. Subsequently, we analyze the state of the art schemes, which attempt to mitigate the risk of insider threats on content confidentiality. Such an analysis helps us to identify the weaknesses of the discussed schemes in addressing the identified organizational requirements and develop our research agenda in this direction.

Abstract Computational grids require secure information sharing between users and resources. Users and resources are members in collaborating organisations, which form a virtual organisation (VO). The heterogeneous distribution of resource providers and requesters require a mechanism to protect shared information and resources from being misused not only by unauthorised individuals but also from authorised individuals. This paper proposes a novel mechanism for controlling information sharing but protection between members in a VO. Content can be shared between members of a VO subject to the VO policy and content owner organisation policy. In the proposed mechanism a member in a VO, who is authorised to access content, is not capable of transferring unprotected content, or protected content and the means for accessing it accidentally or deliberately to others. The VO project managers and collaborating organisations administrators decide which device can access content. Also, when a resource/user leaves the VO the resource/user will not be capable to access the shared information; thereby preventing uncontrolled content leakage. In the proposed solution, we used trusted computing technology to provide a hardware‐based root of trust on user devices. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper focuses on the problem of how to allow sharing of copyrighted content between a set of authorised devices and preventing unauthoried copying of content to other devices. Our main objective is to achieve controlled secure distribution of content, taking into account user requirements for sharing of content and rights. We mainly focused on creating a domain managed by a single owner, where all devices joining the domain are bound to the domain owner. The novel contribution in this paper is proposing a mechanism for strongly binding a domain to a single owner, which enables the binding of content licences to the domain owner. Devices can use a domain content only after joining the domain, which requires the physical involvement of the domain owner, i.e. the licence content holder. Other devices in the domain that are authorised to access the domain content cannot re-transfer the means for accessing content to others, which limits illicit content proliferation. Our novel idea is the way in which we use consumer payment cards to authenticate a domain owner before adding/removing a device from the domain. In addition, the proposed scheme helps to protect consumers ’ privacy; unlike the existing electronic payment system, payment card details are not passed to third parties. Also, domain owner authentication using a payment card is only required for managing domain membership, and is not required for creating, downloading or exchanging content.

Information sharing and protection against leakage is a critical problem especially for organisations having sensitive information. Sharing content between individuals in the same organisation extends to exchanging and sharing content between collaborating organisations. In this paper we propose a novel solution for preventing shared information between collaborating organisations from getting leaked to unauthorised users inside the distination organisation or out side it. In addition, once the content is in the hands of authorised users our solution prevents unethical authorised users from leaking such content to other users in the same organisation or third parties.

This paper focuses on the problem of preventing illegal copying of digital assets without jeopardising the right of legitimate licence holders to transfer content between their own devices, which make up a domain. Our novel idea involves the use of a domain-specific mobile phone and the mobile phone network operator to authenticate the domain owner before devices can join a domain. This binds devices in a domain to a single owner, that, in turn, enables the binding of domain licences to the domain owner. In addition, the way in which we control domain membership, and the use of the domain-specific mobile phone that enables a domain owner to add devices wherever he/she is physically present, ensures that devices joining the domain are in physical proximity to the mobile phone, preventing illicit content proliferation.