Hybrid Cuckoo search — ABC algorithm based vulnerabilities mapping and security in clouds

In terms of data, infrastructure, and virtualization, security is one of the main concerns Private Clouds have been perceived as a relatively impervious deployment model among Cloud models. Confidentiality, integrity, availability, authenticity, and accountability are the essence of security objectives for information systems and the services they offer. Moving assets to remote locations has exposed these assets to considerable classic and new security risks such as accessibility vulnerabilities, web application vulnerabilities, and database vulnerabilities to name a few. This research proposes a cloud security framework and an approach for vulnerabilities coverage and cost optimization using Hybrid Cuckoo search - Artificial Bee Colony optimization algorithm. The objective of this paper is to optimize the selection process of a set of security techniques to cover a set of security vulnerabilities, when minimizing the cost and the new vulnerabilities resulting from the security techniques implemented. The present approach can be used to select the right technologies to mitigate identified vulnerabilities, and therefore has great potential for application. A comprehensive database of security vulnerabilities and corresponding security technologies will definitely improve the speed, the reliability, the accuracy, the consistency, and the efficiency of this approach over an approach based on subjective selection.