Continuous certification of non-repudiation in cloud storage services

This paper presents a certification model for Non-repudiation (NR) of cloud storage services. NR, i.e., The possession of proofs that certain exchanges have taken place amongst interacting parties, is a significant security property for cloud data storage services. Our model for certifying NR is based on continuous monitoring and has been defined and realised according to the CUMULUS approach. It also corresponds to certification of level 3 maturity in the reference certification framework of Cloud Security Alliance

Medina: Improving cloud services trustworthiness through continuous audit-based certification

One of the reasons of the still limited adoption of Cloud Computing in the EU is the EU customers' perceived lack of security and transparency in this technology. Cloud service providers (CSPs) usually rely on security certifications as a mean to improve transparency and trustworthiness, however European CSPs still face multiple challenges for certifying their services (e.g., fragmentation in the certification market, and lack of mutual recognition). In this context, the EU Cybersecurity Act (EU CSA) proposes improving customer's trust in the European ICT market through a European certification scheme (EUCS). The proposed cloud security certification scheme conveys new technological challenges including the notion of automated monitoring for the whole supply chain, which needs to be solved in order to bring all the expected benefits to EU cloud providers and customers. In this context, MEDINA proposes a framework for supporting a continuous audit-based certification for CSPs based on EU CSA's scheme for cloud security certification. MEDINA will tackle challenges in areas like security validation/ testing, machine-readable certification language, cloud security performance, and audit evidence management. MEDINA will provide and empirically validate sustainable outcomes in order to benefit EU adopters.This work has been partially funded by the European project MEDINA (Horizon 2020 research and innovation Programme, under grant agreement no 952633)

A component-based framework for certification of components in a cloud of HPC services

HPC Shelfis a proposal of a cloud computing platform to provide component-oriented services for High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. This paper presents a Verification-as-a-Service (VaaS) framework for component certification onHPC Shelf. Certification is aimed at providing higher confidence that components of parallel computing systems ofHPC Shelfbehave as expected according to one or more requirements expressed in their contracts. To this end, new abstractions are introduced, starting with certifier components. They are designed to inspect other components and verify them for different types of functional, non-functional and behavioral requirements. The certification framework is naturally based on parallel computing techniques to speed up verification tasks.NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000037

Hybrid cloud security certification

In this report, I introduce a hybrid approach for certifying security properties of cloud services that combines monitoring and testing data. This report argues about the need for hybrid certification and examines the basic characteristics of hybrid certification models. The certification of cloud service security has become a necessity due to the on-going concerns about cloud security and the need to increase cloud trustworthiness through rigorous assessments of security by trusted third parties. Unlike the certification of security in traditional software systems, which is based on static forms of security assessment (e.g., the Common Criteria model), the certification of cloud service security requires continuous assessment. This is because cloud services are provisioned through dynamic infrastructures operating under security controls and other configurations that may change dynamically introducing unforeseen vulnerabilities. Cloud service security can also be compromised because of attacks on co-tenant services. Recent work on cloud service certification applies dynamic forms of security assessment, notably dynamic testing or continuous monitoring. These overcome some of the limitations of traditional security certification and audits (e.g. they produce machine readable certificates incorporating dynamically collected evidence). However, there are cases where existing approaches cannot provide an adequate level of assurance. Testing, for instance, may be insufficient for transactional services, as it is normally performed through a special testing (as opposed to the operational) service interface. Monitoring-based certification may also be insufficient if there is conflicting or inconclusive evidence in monitoring data; such data may, for example, not cover all traces of system events that should be seen to assess a property. To overcome such problems, I am working on a hybrid approach for certifying cloud service security that can combine both monitoring and testing evidence. For that reason, I designed a new cloud certification approach supporting the automated and continuous certification of security properties of cloud services based on the combination of dynamically acquired testing and monitoring evidence that can deliver the high level of assurance and can overcome the limitations of assessments based on each of these types of evidence in isolation. My approach is based on the cloud certification framework of the CUMULUS EU FP7 project

A framework for certification of large-scale component-based parallel computing systems in a cloud computing platform for HPC services

This paper addresses the verification of software components in the context of their orchestration to build cloud-based scientific applications with high performance computing requirements. In such a scenario, components are often supplied by different sources and their cooperation rely on assumptions of conformity with their published behavioral interfaces. Therefore, a faulty or ill-designed component, failing to obey to the envisaged behavioral requirements, may have dramatic consequences in practice. Certifier components, introduced in this paper, implement a verification as a service framework and are able to access the implementation of other components and verify their consistency with respect to a number of functional, safety and liveness requirements relevant to a specific application or a class of them. It is shown how certifier components can be smoothly integrated in HPC Shelf, a cloud-based platform for high performance computing in which different sorts of users can design, deploy and execute scientific applications.SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations, methods, Tools) / NORTE-01-0145-FEDER000037, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (EFD

Taming the cloud: Safety, certification and compliance for software services - Keynote at the Workshop on Engineering Service-Oriented Applications (WESOA) 2011

The maturity of IT processes, such as software development, can be and is often certified. Current trends in the IT industry suggest that software systems in the future will be very different from their counterparts today, with an increasing adoption of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) design pattern and the deployment of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on Cloud infrastructures. In this talk we discuss some issues surrounding engineering Software Services for Cloud infrastructures and highlight the need for enhanced control, service-level agreement and compliance mechanisms for Software Services. Cloud Infrastructures and Service Mash-ups

Cyber insurance of information systems: Security and privacy cyber insurance contracts for ICT and helathcare organizations

Nowadays, more-and-more aspects of our daily activities are digitalized. Data and assets in the cyber-space, both for individuals and organizations, must be safeguarded. Thus, the insurance sector must face the challenge of digital transformation in the 5G era with the right set of tools. In this paper, we present CyberSure-an insurance framework for information systems. CyberSure investigates the interplay between certification, risk management, and insurance of cyber processes. It promotes continuous monitoring as the new building block for cyber insurance in order to overcome the current obstacles of identifying in real-time contractual violations by the insured party and receiving early warning notifications prior the violation. Lightweight monitoring modules capture the status of the operating components and send data to the CyberSure backend system which performs the core decision making. Therefore, an insured system is certified dynamically, with the risk and insurance perspectives being evaluated at runtime as the system operation evolves. As new data become available, the risk management and the insurance policies are adjusted and fine-tuned. When an incident occurs, the insurance company possesses adequate information to assess the situation fast, estimate accurately the level of a potential loss, and decrease the required period for compensating the insured customer. The framework is applied in the ICT and healthcare domains, assessing the system of medium-size organizations. GDPR implications are also considered with the overall setting being effective and scalable

A Security Pattern for Cloud service certification

Cloud computing is interesting from the economic, operational and even energy consumption perspectives but it still raises concerns regarding the security, privacy, governance and compliance of the data and software services offered through it. However, the task of verifying security properties in services running on cloud is not trivial. We notice the provision and security of a cloud service is sensitive. Because of the potential interference between the features and behavior of all the inter-dependent services in all layers of the cloud stack (as well as dynamic changes in them). Besides current cloud models do not include support for trust-focused communication between layers. We present a mechanism to implement cloud service certification process based on the usage of Trusted Computing technology, by means of its Trusted Computing Platform (TPM) implementation of its architecture. Among many security security features it is a tamper proof resistance built in device and provides a root of trust to affix our certification mechanism. We present as a security pattern the approach for service certification based on the use TPM.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

The case for cloud service trustmarks and assurance-as-a-service

Cloud computing represents a significant economic opportunity for Europe. However, this growth is threatened by adoption barriers largely related to trust. This position paper examines trust and confidence issues in cloud computing and advances a case for addressing them through the implementation of a novel trustmark scheme for cloud service providers. The proposed trustmark would be both active and dynamic featuring multi-modal information about the performance of the underlying cloud service. The trustmarks would be informed by live performance data from the cloud service provider, or ideally an independent third-party accountability and assurance service that would communicate up-to-date information relating to service performance and dependability. By combining assurance measures with a remediation scheme, cloud service providers could both signal dependability to customers and the wider marketplace and provide customers, auditors and regulators with a mechanism for determining accountability in the event of failure or non-compliance. As a result, the trustmarks would convey to consumers of cloud services and other stakeholders that strong assurance and accountability measures are in place for the service in question and thereby address trust and confidence issues in cloud computing

The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management