Security and Trust in Cloud Computing

The discussion of security and trust issues in this book chapter will follow from the discussions on the role of virtualization in cloud computing and hence the impact that the various categories of virtualization such as server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, and application virtualization have on the security and trust issues in cloud computing. It will be evident from these discussions that virtualization introduces a number of security and risk related challenges in cloud computing based on the three security objectives of confidentiality, integrity, and availability; and the two main other related security objectives of authenticity and accountability of information systems that were adopted for this discussion. It was however also noted that if the necessary recommended best practices of virtualizations are faithfully adhered to, then virtualization can actually lead to improvement or enhancement in the security posture of cloud environments.