Per-Service Security SLa: A New Model for Security Management in Clouds

Abstract

In the cloud computing context, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are contracts between Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Cloud Service Customers (CSCs), stating the guaranteed quality level of the services offered by CSPs. Existing cloud SLAs focus only on few service terms, completely ignoring all security related aspects. They are often reported in a way that is hardly understandable for customers. Moreover, they offer guarantees uniform for all offered services and all customers, regardless of particular service characteristics or customers specific needs. This paper presents a framework that enables the adoption of a per-service SLA model, by supporting the automatic implementation of cloud Security SLAs tailored to the needs of each customer for specific service instances. In particular, the process and the software architecture for per-service SLA implementation are shown. A case study application demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution.