Cloud Security Auditing

This book provides a comprehensive review of the most up to date research related to cloud security auditing and discusses auditing the cloud infrastructure from the structural point of view, while focusing on virtualization-related security properties and consistency between multiple control layers. It presents an off-line automated framework for auditing consistent isolation between virtual networks in OpenStack-managed cloud spanning over overlay and layer 2 by considering both cloud layers’ views. A runtime security auditing framework for the cloud with special focus on the user-level including common access control and authentication mechanisms e.g., RBAC, ABAC and SSO is covered as well. 

This book also discusses a learning-based proactive security auditing system, which extracts probabilistic dependencies between runtime events and applies such dependencies to proactively audit and prevent security violations resulting from critical events. Finally, this book elaborates the design and implementation of a middleware as a pluggable interface to OpenStack for intercepting and verifying the legitimacy of user requests at runtime.

Many companies nowadays leverage cloud services for conducting major business operations (e.g., Web service, inventory management, customer service, etc.). However, the fear of losing control and governance still persists due to the inherent lack of transparency and trust in clouds. The complex design and implementation of cloud infrastructures may cause numerous vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, while the unique properties of clouds (elastic, self-service, multi-tenancy) can bring novel security challenges. In this book, the authors discuss how state-of-the-art security auditing solutions may help increase cloud tenants’ trust in the service providers by providing assurance on the compliance with the applicable laws, regulations, policies, and standards. This book introduces the latest research results on both traditional retroactive auditing and novel (runtime and proactive) auditing techniques to serve different stakeholders in the cloud. This book covers security threats from different cloud abstraction levels and discusses a wide-range of security properties related to cloud-specific standards (e.g., Cloud Control Matrix (CCM) and ISO 27017). It also elaborates on the integration of security auditing solutions into real world cloud management platforms (e.g., OpenStack, Amazon AWS and Google GCP).

This book targets industrial scientists, who are working on cloud or security-related topics, as well as security practitioners, administrators, cloud providers and operators.

Researchers and advanced-level students studying and working in computer science, practically in cloud security will also be interested in this book.

Taous Madi is currently an Experienced Researcher at Ericsson Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal. Previously, she finished her M.Sc. in mobile computing from the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumedien (USTHB), Algiers. Her research interests include cloud computing, network function virtualization security, software-defined networking security, internet of things security, machine learning and formal methods.

Yushun Wang completed his MASc in Information System Security from Concordia University. Previously, he worked as a customer network support engineer, Ericsson (China) for 12 years. He is currently working as a developer at Above Security Canada.

Azadeh Tabiban is currently a Ph.D. student at Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE). She obtained her Master's degree in Information Systems Security from Concordia University, where she contributed to several research projects on cloud security auditing. Her research interest focuses on the development of more accountable and transparent virtualized environments; particularly on cloud and NFV provenance, intrusion detection, proactive auditing and secure virtualization in untrusted cloud infrastructures.

Momen Oqaily is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in information and systems engineering at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada. He received his B.S. degree in network engineering and security and the master’s degree in Information Systems Engineering. His research interests include privacy and cloud computing security auditing.

Amir Alimohammadifar completed his BSc in Information Technology in 2010. He received his first master’s in Information Technology, communication and computer networks from Sharif University of Technology, 2012, and his second master’s in Information Systems Security from Concordia University. He is currently working as a security DevOps engineer at Gameloft Canada.

Yosr Jarraya is currently a researcher in security at Ericsson. Before that, she had a two-year MITACS postdoctoral fellowship with the company. She was previously Research Associate and Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University, Montreal. She received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University. She is the co-author of more than 30 research papers on topics including cloud security, network and software security, formal verification and SDN.

Makan Pourzandi is a research leader at Ericsson, Canada. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Lyon I Claude Bernard, France and a M.Sc. in parallel computing from École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France. He has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of cyber security, Telecom and distributed systems. He co-authored a book on software security published by Springer on 2015 and is the co-inventor of 19 granted US patents. He has published more than 65 research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences.

Lingyu Wang is a Professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE) at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He holds the NSERC/Ericsson Senior Industrial Research Chair in SDN/NFV Security. He received his Ph.D. degree in Information Technology in 2006 from George Mason University. His research interests include cloud computing security, SDN/NFV security, security metrics, software security, and privacy. He has co-authored five books, two patents, and over 120 refereed conference and journal articles at reputable venues including TOPS, TIFS, TDSC, TMC, JCS, S&P, CCS, NDSS, ESORICS, PETS, ICDT, etc. 

Mourad Debbabi is a Full Professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering and Associate Dean Research and Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science. He holds the NSERC/Hydro-Que´bec Thales Senior Industrial Research Chair in Smart Grid Security and the Concordia Research Chair Tier I in Information Systems Security. Dr. Debbabi holds Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in computer science from Paris-XI Orsay, University, France. He published three books and more than 260 peer-reviewed research articles in international journals and conferences on cy