A USER-DRIVEN TRUST MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR CLOUD ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Cloud computing offers dynamic, scalable, shared resources over the Internet from remote data centers to the users. The highly distributed and non-transparent nature of cloud computing represents a considerable obstacle for the acceptance and market success of cloud services. Potential customers of these services often feel that they lose the control over their data, and they are not sure whether they can trust the cloud providers. This research therefore introduces a user-driven trust management framework to help potential cloud users identify trustworthy providers in the cloud marketplace and in turn help cloud computing accomplish its goal of providing economic computing. The proposed model uses the dimensions of trust for cloud services (such as; integrity, scalability, usability and availability of the service) as the metrics for trust measurement. Verified service users are required to vouch their degree of trust for the service they use and the trust level for the various metrics are hence computed and kept continuous in a parallel format. A generalized trust score for the service is also computed and a service guarantee level generated. This guarantee level informs potential users of the level to which the system guarantees the viability of the service provided. The research was implemented using PHP, JavaScript, CSS and MySQL database. The research was experimented taking a case study of Microsoft Azure storage service with about one hundred and five (105) verified Azure storage users vouching their various trust degree for the various metrics of the service. Malicious users were denied vouching privilege and the system revealed that Azure storage service can be well trusted with a trust score of 81.07%. The result obtained showed that the model is a viable decision making tool in the cloud environment.