A multi-dimension taxonomy of insider threats in cloud computing

Security is considered a significant deficiency in cloud computing, and insider threats problem exacerbate security concerns in the cloud. In addition to that, cloud computing is very complex by itself, because it encompasses numerous technologies and concepts. Apparently, overcoming these challenges requires substantial efforts from information security researchers to develop powerful mitigation solutions for this emerging problem. This entails developing a taxonomy of insider threats in cloud environments encompassing all potential abnormal activities in the cloud, and can be useful for conducting security assessment. This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing research to develop a framework for mitigating insider threats in cloud computing environments. Primarily, it presents a multidimensional taxonomy of insider threats in cloud computing, and demonstrates its viability. The taxonomy provides a fundamental understanding for this complicated problem by identifying five dimensions, it also supports security engineers in identifying hidden paths, thus determining proper countermeasures, and presents a guidance covers all bounders of insiders threats issue in clouds, hence it facilitates researchers’ endeavours in tackling this problem. For instance, according to the hierarchical taxonomy, clearly many significant issues exist in public cloud, while conventional insider mitigation solutions can be used in private clouds. Finally, the taxonomy assists in identifying future research directions in this emerging area