Cloud Computing Security

Cloud computing reflects the latest trends in business to deliver software and services over the Internet. Gartner predicts that the bulk of new IT spending by 2016 will be for cloud computing platforms and applications with nearly half of large enterprises having cloud deployments by the end of 2017. Worldwide spending on public IT cloud services is expected to be more than $107 billion in 2017, according to a forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC) in 2013. Over the 2013-2017 forecast period, public IT cloud services are estimated to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5%, five times that of the IT industry as a whole.

However, practical adoption of cloud technologies may be greatly impeded if security and privacy issues are not adequately addressed. As the cloud is an open platform, it can be subjected to malicious attacks from both insiders and outsiders; the need to protect the security and privacy of the data in the cloud becomes a critical issue. Although recent advances in cryptography, such as fully homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation, are promising, more work is still needed to transform theoretical techniques into practical solutions that can be efficiently implemented in the cloud.

Original and unpublished contributions on novel attacks, defences and security applications in cloud computing are solicited. Research works that are motivated by tackling real-world security problems in the cloud are especially encouraged. Practical and theoretical aspects of security and privacy in cloud computing are invited. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

Access control mechanisms for clouds

Security architectures for cloud computing

Security protocols for cloud computing

Privacy-preserving data mining for clouds

Identity management for cloud services

Information sharing and data protection in the cloud

Cryptographic protocols against internal attacks in clouds

Risk management in cloud computing environments

Privacy protection in cloud platforms

Mechanisms to enforce privacy and trust

Energy/cost/efficiency of security in clouds

Trust models for cloud services