Security Framework for Hosting Systems on the Cloud: Case Study of Jordan E-Government Websites

Nowadays database systems become more and more critical in every domain of our lives. Websites are becoming more dynamics, they being more than browsing content and pages through internet. They are being more interactive and keep users comfort as they can read, browse, send and receive critical information through their interfaces. Recently websites are being hosted in larger datacenters owned by large hosting companies. Most technologies trends move towards Cloud computing technologies that leads them for global datacenters rather that local ones. Even though this technology will provide a lot of services, there are many concerns related for securing and maintaining the cloud environments safe. Many techniques are being done to handle these issues in the literature but they are provided separately; they are not dedicated for specific applications and targeted issues. Hosting websites in secure datacenter is a major concept. There are many layers should be introduced to provide access to secure websites and applications published on the internet. In this paper we introduce complete framework to host a dynamic website on cloud datacenters, to emphasis the security requirements for hosting secure websites and database services. We have analyzed the attacks targeting the hosting services and find that the application and network levels have a significant part in the security framework design. Also, best practices and recommendations were also provided.