Trust Assessment for Cloud Identity Providers Using Analytical Hierarchy Process

The trust assessment is a key function that should be performed in advance of any cloud customers’ decision making. A complete methodology for security, risk, and reputation assessment of cloud identity providers is a gap in the current literature and system architectures. In this paper multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) is introduced to prioritize the attributes for a cloud identity trust framework. The overall trust assessment is decomposed into two parts: the trust analysis of the federated identity management systems, and the quantification of trust. The MCDM approach delivers the inputs to an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to complete the trust assessment. This paper innovates a theoretical solution to the trust gap between cloud identity providers and the cloud identity customers in the current literature.