Trust Models for Cloud Applications and Identity Access Management - Review of Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

In recent years, many organizations as well as individuals have made it a common practice to use different service providers to maintain their accounts and access various range of services for different purposes. The service can be Grid, Cloud or Mobile. IAM with sophisticated Identity management systems can provide central administration, self-services, user management, role-based access controls for and using multiple technologies. IAM ensures that human or software agents get properly authenticated and authorized while accessing the cloud or grid network through multiple technologies or web services.  Successful IAM can increase the Usability, Availability, Accuracy, Relevance and Cost Effectiveness. If the attributes to the identities are not verified accurately, then the users and usage become vulnerable which may result in either data or financial loss. In some cases, the reputation of the organizations can be greatly affected if there is no IAM or proper security management is in place. Therefore, it is important to realize the gaps with the valuation of the trust models, policies, frameworks and associated service providers, to arrive at proper improvements and recommendations. This paper provides a comprehensive comparative analysis for various trust models, frameworks and related tools. Based on the extended literature reviews and recommendations, this article also provides future directions for improving the effectiveness of the trust models and the related policies using multi-dimensional and multi-variate factor analysis.