Design of an Integrated Authentication and Authorization Approach for Interoperability in Federated Clouds

Abstract

newlineCloud-based architecture is designed to share high-value data amongst numerous clients as well as multiple domains. Two major cornerstones of the security in cloud computing are authentication and authorization. Authenticating users in single cloud domain was not that complicated. However, it becomes a challenge when cloud federation comes into play where users from different cloud domains wants to access the resources from another multiple cloud domains. Authorization is concerned with the role and access permissions granted to the user. These role and permissions can change dynamically when the user enters a different cloud domain. Therefore, an authorization scheme is required that is also dynamic in nature and can support the scalability in the federated clouds. newlineIn this thesis, an integrated authentication and authorization scheme for interoperability in federated clouds have been proposed. A new model has been designed while deploying three different cloud servers each of them with their own authentication schemes namely X.509 identity certificates, Kerberos 5 and the username/password. After deploying the three clouds, the authentication process between any two cloud servers is tested at a time. Although the authentication schemes are different, but the communication is made possible by mapping of these authentication schemes.