A Trust Management Solution in the Context of Hybrid Clouds

Cloud computing is a revolutionary paradigm which enables on-demand provisioning of computing resources. Resources are delivered to cloud consumers in the form of infrastructure, platform and software services. These resources are deployed on three different models: private clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds. In hybrid cloud context, private clouds externalize resources and invoke services from a public cloud when needed. However, in such a specific inter-cloud environment risks may arise. In fact, private cloud users often interact with cloud providers for services provisioning such as infrastructure, platforms and software. However, they are not sufficiently assured about how credible the data computed by these resources they have entrusted. This is due to clouds autonomy preservation, difference in control policy definitions and lack of transparency in clouds. In this paper, we propose a preventive/detective approach for assessing private cloud to select a trustworthy public cloud service. The solution is based on a mediator as a service that ensures the role of trust manager for the private cloud.