Unified Framework for End-User Authentication Protocol in Feature-as-a-Service Models

Feature-as-a-Service (FaaS) is a new cloud computing model that simplifies the implementation of new features in existing apps with minimal code modifications. One of the most important characteristics of FaaS is that the FaaS server manages its data independently of the service server. However, such a FaaS scheme has a potential issue. Specifically, in the FaaS server, authenticating end-users can be a problem because the service server usually manages user and authentication data. Although several FaaS products requiring end-user authentication have their own authentication methods to address this problem, there is no industry standard for a FaaS server to authenticate an end-user; i.e., commercial FaaS products have individualized end-user authentication methods. In this paper, we analyze existing FaaS products and propose an introductory guideline about end-user authentication methods for FaaS. This guideline aims to help FaaS customers understand the FaaS’s authentication and suggest implementation direction.