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

Service Level Agreement-based GDPR Compliance and Security assurance in (multi)Cloud-based systems

Compliance with the new European General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and security assurance are currently two major challenges of Cloud-based systems. GDPR compliance implies both privacy and security mechanisms definition, enforcement and control, including evidence collection. This paper presents a novel DevOps framework aimed at supporting Cloud consumers in designing, deploying and operating (multi)Cloud systems that include the necessary privacy and security controls for ensuring transparency to end-users, third parties in service provision (if any) and law enforcement authorities. The framework relies on the risk-driven specification at design time of privacy and security level objectives in the system Service Level Agreement (SLA) and in their continuous monitoring and enforcement at runtime.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644429 and No 780351, MUSA project and ENACT project, respectively. We would also like to acknowledge all the members of the MUSA Consortium and ENACT Consortium for their valuable help

Could the Outsourcing of Incident Response Management provide a Blueprint for Managing Other Cloud Security Requirements?

Postprin

Secure data sharing and processing in heterogeneous clouds

The extensive cloud adoption among the European Public Sector Players empowered them to own and operate a range of cloud infrastructures. These deployments vary both in the size and capabilities, as well as in the range of employed technologies and processes. The public sector, however, lacks the necessary technology to enable effective, interoperable and secure integration of a multitude of its computing clouds and services. In this work we focus on the federation of private clouds and the approaches that enable secure data sharing and processing among the collaborating infrastructures and services of public entities. We investigate the aspects of access control, data and security policy languages, as well as cryptographic approaches that enable fine-grained security and data processing in semi-trusted environments. We identify the main challenges and frame the future work that serve as an enabler of interoperability among heterogeneous infrastructures and services. Our goal is to enable both security and legal conformance as well as to facilitate transparency, privacy and effectivity of private cloud federations for the public sector needs. © 2015 The Authors

All-Payer Claims Database Development Manual: Establishing a Foundation for Health Care Transparency and Informed Decision Making

With support from the Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center, the APCD Council has developed a manual for states to develop all-payer claims databases. Titled All-Payer Claims Database Development Manual: Establishing a Foundation for Health Care Transparency and Informed Decision Making, the manual is a first-of its-kind resource that provides states with detailed guidance on common data standards, collection, aggregation and analysis involved with establishing these databases