Secure processing of large scale databases in a cloud computing environment

Undeniably, cloud computing has been reshaping information technology drastically, and eventually making utility computing comes true. Internet services, ranging from simple word processing to online social networking, are progressively being shifted to the cloud. These services are interesting because they assure high scalability, availability, and reliability. Nevertheless, they are missing security as a vital non-functional requirement. As users no longer control their data and hand its governance over to cloud providers, data is significantly exposed to misuses and malicious attacks. In this article we present a lightweight software based agent that runs along with the cloud database on every host machine (i.e. virtual machine). The agents implement all the logic needed to prevent malicious attacks, monitor, and assess database transactions.