Identity and Access Management in the Cloud Computing Environments

Abstract

Nowadays, the issue of identity and access management (IAM) has become an important research topic in cloud computing. In the distributed computing environments like cloud computing, effective authentication and authorization are essential to make sure that unauthorized users do not access the resources, thereby ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information hosted in the cloud environment. In this chapter, the authors discuss the issue of identity and access management in cloud computing, analyzing the work carried out by others in the area. Also, various issues in the current IAM scenario in cloud computing, such as authentication, authorization, access control models, identity life cycle management, cloud identity-as-a-service, federated identity management and also, the identity and access management in the inter-cloud environment are discussed. The authors conclude this chapter discussing a few research issues in the area of identity and access management in the cloud and inter-cloud environments.