Towards Cloud Security Monitoring: A Case Study

Cloud computing has become the norm in the provisioning of computing resources due to its flexible and proven reliability. Businesses perceive cloud services as a trend that presents enormous possibilities both in economic and technical terms. The growth in cloud services have also increased bottlenecks and security risks to business assets. Cloud security monitoring has remained relatively unexplored in security terms, a factor that has led businesses to be oblivious on the metrics to capture and the appropriate techniques to use. In this paper, we explore security monitoring in terms of tracking specific user requirements based on a case study. We identify various security tools that are practically relevant for addressing the requirements, and devise selection criteria for choosing the best tools. We present an evaluation of the tools and present a ranking for the tools that meet the particular requirements of the case study. The effort in this paper broadens the notion of cloud security monitoring and provides a methodical practical approach to solving a security related issue.