Flogger: A File-Centric Logger for Monitoring File Access and Transfers within Cloud Computing Environments

Trust is one of the main obstacles to widespread Cloud adoption. In order to increase trust in Cloud computing, we need to increase transparency and accountability of data in the Cloud for both enterprises and end-users. However, current system tools are unable to log file accesses and transfers effectively within a Cloud environment. In this paper, we present Flogger, a novel file-centric logger suitable for both private and public Cloud environments. Flogger records file- centric access and transfer information from within the kernel spaces of both virtual machines (VMs) and physical machines (PMs) in the Cloud, thus giving full transparency of the entire data landscape in the Cloud. With Flogger, services can be built above it to provide Cloud providers, end-users and regulators with the relevant provenance, e.g. a tool for an end- user to track whether his/ her file was 'touched' by an unauthorized user. We present the initial developments of Flogger, and interesting results from our experiments. We also present compelling future work that will shape the beginnings of a new logging paradigm: distributed VM/ PM file-centric logging.