Cyber threats to the Private Academic Cloud

Abstract

The potential breach of access to confidential content hosted in a university's Private Academic Cloud (PAC) underscores the need for developing new protection methods. This paper introduces a Threat Analyzer Software (TAS) and a predictive algorithm rooted in both an operational model and discrete threat recognition procedures (DTRPs). These tools aid in identifying the functional layers that attackers could exploit to embed malware in guest operating systems (OS) and the PAC hypervisor. The solutions proposed herein play a crucial role in ensuring countermeasures against malware introduction into the PAC. Various hypervisor components are viewed as potential threat sources to the PAC's information security (IS). Such threats may manifest through the distribution of malware or the initiation of processes that compromise the PAC's security. The demonstrated counter-threat method, which is founded on the operational model and discrete threat recognition procedures, facilitates the use of mechanisms within the HIPV to quickly identify cyber attacks on the PAC, especially those employing "rootkit" technologies. This prompt identification empowers defenders to take swift and appropriate actions to safeguard the PAC.