Comparative requirements analysis for the feasibility of blockchain for secure cloud

Abstract

Cloud users are striving for minimum provider interference in accessing services from cloud’s shared pool of resources due to the dynamic and untrusted nature of cloud, and untrusted, vulnerable and greedy nature of Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). Service level agreements (SLA) are a critical aspect in maintaining security, trust and provisioning Quality of Service (QoS) in Cloud. The SLA consists of Service-level goals or the Functional and Non-Functional levels that are officially agreed by the customer and the providers. The SLA lifecycle is costly and time-consuming process. Using Blockchain technology’s use-cases with Cloud can solve the trust and security requirements of cloud users as well as make SLAs transparent and open to cloud users for quick service provisioning. In order to analyze the feasibility of using Blockchain technology with Cloud, this paper, comparatively analyze the Security and trust requirements and Non-Functional requirements of Cloud and Blockchain to solve the security and trust requirements of cloud users in cloud. We also propose a secure and self-adaptive Blockchain based framework for cloud. Blockchain being the backbone of this framework, this framework exploits the feasible use cases of the Blockchain to enhance the trust requirement of the third party (Cloud Service provider) in Cloud and maintain trust and security in the Cloud by making data secure and SLA transparent and open to all Cloud users, aiding users to analyze and make spontaneous decisions for using Cloud services.