Monitoring Cloud Computing by Layer, Part 1

The general characteristics of cloud computing´s three service models-software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infra structure as a service (IaaS)-include on-demand self service, broad network access, pooling of resources, rapid elasticity of provisioning resources, and service or resource monitoring. On the basis of the Cloud Security Alliance´s work, a cloud is modeled in seven layers: facility, network, hardware, OS, middle ware, application, and the user. These layers can be controlled by either the cloud provider or the cloud customer. The paper present a set of recommended restrictions and audits to facilitate cloud security. Although the recommendations might be overkill for deployments involving no sensitive data, they might be insufficient to allow certain information to be hosted in any public or community cloud. Owing to space constraints, the paper only cover the lower four layers. Part 2 will complete the discussion by covering the middleware, application, and user layers.