Abstract:
Cloud computing (CC) is an emerging technology which is used for large scale
organizations for data storage and management. It provides advantages like reducing the
cost of IT services by shared computing resources and more data storage space, in addition
with an on-demand and easy pay per use service mechanism. These emerging
developments have a direct influence on many standard parameters like security, trust and
privacy etc. On the other side many challenges are also associated with cloud computing
that includes, trust establishment, data protection from unauthorized access , data recovery
and backup availability when in need and data management capabilities etc. Developing
customers trust is considered to be most essential of all. In this regard cloud federation is
formed by different Cloud Service providers (CSPs) to share their resources so that they
can satisfy their customer’s demands and expand their geographic footprints. In cloud
environment it is essential to make sure that the customer’s data is fully secured and
standard privacy laws are applied to form a trusted relationship and estimate the level of
trust between the participating CSPs in a federation for the customer’s satisfaction.
Therefore the focus of this research is to identify the issue for establishment of trusted
environment and evaluation of level of trust between CSPs as it is an important requirement
for CSPs to take participation in cloud federation for the best utilization of computing
resources and customer attraction. The key motivation behind this research is to propose
the trust evaluation model that can resolve these issue and motivates the cloud providers to
successfully participate in cloud federation. In this regard, a federated cloud trust
management model is presented that evaluates the level of trust based on mechanism that
considers Service level agreement (SLA) parameters, feedback from customers and
feedback from the participating CSPs.
