A Distributed Access Control Architecture for Cloud Computing

Abdulrahman Almutairi, Purdue University
Muhammad Sarfraz, Purdue University
Saleh Basalamah, Umm Al-Qura University
Walid Aref, Purdue University
Arif Ghafoor, Purdue University

SOFTWARE Journal, March-April 2012, vol. 29, No. 2, pages 36-44

Abstract

The large-scale, dynamic, and heterogeneous nature of cloud computing poses numerous security challenges. But the cloud's main challenge is to provide a robust authorization mechanism that incorporates multitenancy and virtualization aspects of resources. The authors present a distributed architecture that incorporates principles from security management and software engineering and propose key requirements and a design model for the architecture.