Cloud Storage and Bioinformatics in a private cloud deployment: Lessons for Data Intensive research

This paper describes service portability for a private cloud deployment, including a detailed case study about Cloud Storage and bioinformatics services developed as part of the Cloud Computing Adoption Framework (CCAF). Our Cloud Storage design and deployment is based on Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies, details of which include functionalities, technical implementation, architecture and user support. Experiments for data services (backup automation, data recovery and data migration) are performed and results confirm backup automation is completed swiftly and is reliable for data-intensive research. The data recovery result confirms that execution time is in proportion to quantity of recovered data, but the failure rate increases in an exponential manner. The data migration result confirms execution time is in proportion to disk volume of migrated data, but again the failure rate increases in an exponential manner. In addition, benefits of CCAF are illustrated using several bioinformatics examples such as tumour modelling, brain imaging, insulin molecules and simulations for medical training. Our Cloud Storage solution described here offers cost reduction, time-saving and user friendliness

Managing the outsourcing of information security processes: the 'cloud' solution

Information security processes and systems are relevant for any organization and involve medium-to-high investment; however, the current economic downturn is causing a dramatic reduction in spending on Information Technology (IT). Cloud computing (i.e., externalization of one or more IT services) might be a solution for organizations keen to maintain a good level of security. In this paper we discuss whether cloud computing is a valid alternative to in-house security processes and systems drawing on four mini-case studies of higher education institutions in New England, US. Our findings show that the organization’s IT spending capacity affects the choice to move to the cloud; however, the perceived security of the cloud and the perceived in-house capacity to provide high quality IT (and security) services moderate this relationship. Moreover, other variables such as (low) quality of technical support, relatively incomplete contracts, poor defined Service License Agreements (SLA), and ambiguities over data ownership affect the choice to outsource IT (and security) using the cloud. We suggest that, while cloud computing could be a useful means of IT outsourcing, there needs to be a number of changes and improvements to how the service is currently delivered

Flexible Yet Secure De-Duplication Service for Enterprise Data on Cloud Storage

The cloud storage services bring forth infinite storage capacity and flexible access capability to store and share large-scale content. The convenience brought forth has attracted both individual and enterprise users to outsource data service to a cloud provider. As the survey shows 56% of the usages of cloud storage applications are for data back up and up to 68% of data backup are user assets. Enterprise tenants would need to protect their data privacy before uploading them to the cloud and expect a reasonable performance while they try to reduce the operation cost in terms of cloud storage, capacity and I/Os matter as well as systems’ performance, bandwidth and data protection. Thus, enterprise tenants demand secure and economic data storage yet flexible access on their cloud data. In this paper, we propose a secure de-duplication solution for enterprise tenants to leverage the benefits of cloud storage while reducing operation cost and protecting privacy. First, the solution uses a proxy to do flexible group access control which supports secure de-duplication within a group; Second, the solution supports scalable clustering of proxies to support large-scale data access; Third, the solution can be integrated with cloud storage seamlessly. We implemented and tested our solution by integrating it with Dropbox. Secure de-duplication in a group is performed at low data transfer latency and small storage overhead as compared to de-duplication on plaintext

A comprehensive meta-analysis of cryptographic security mechanisms for cloud computing

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The concept of cloud computing offers measurable computational or information resources as a service over the Internet. The major motivation behind the cloud setup is economic benefits, because it assures the reduction in expenditure for operational and infrastructural purposes. To transform it into a reality there are some impediments and hurdles which are required to be tackled, most profound of which are security, privacy and reliability issues. As the user data is revealed to the cloud, it departs the protection-sphere of the data owner. However, this brings partly new security and privacy concerns. This work focuses on these issues related to various cloud services and deployment models by spotlighting their major challenges. While the classical cryptography is an ancient discipline, modern cryptography, which has been mostly developed in the last few decades, is the subject of study which needs to be implemented so as to ensure strong security and privacy mechanisms in today’s real-world scenarios. The technological solutions, short and long term research goals of the cloud security will be described and addressed using various classical cryptographic mechanisms as well as modern ones. This work explores the new directions in cloud computing security, while highlighting the correct selection of these fundamental technologies from cryptographic point of view

Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures