Evaluating Security Mechanisms Implemented on Windows Azure

Abstract

Slow adoption of cloud services due to security concerns indicates a need for evaluating existing security measures in cloud and further development of methods and techniques for their enhancement. This paper presents an investigation into the security mechanisms of Windows Azure, Platformas-a-Service (PaaS) delivery model. The evaluation in this case study is achieved by segregating the cloud service into three core components and then assessing each using a taxonomy for PaaS cloud security made up of operation domains identified by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and our developed security framework as matrices. This work aims to look at the holistic security architecture of PaaS cloud service in order to identify its security offerings and develop a security risk profile. The preliminary results indicate that most vulnerable component of PaaS, Windows Azure, and possibly in other clouds too is the Host/Compute component, responsible for the application and visualization security.