A Centralized Trust Model Approach for Cloud Computing

In the IT world of corporate networking, how businesses store and compute data is starting to shift from in-house servers to the cloud. However, some enterprises are still hesitant to make this leap to the cloud because of their information security and data privacy concerns. Enterprises that want to invest into this service need to feel confident that the information stored on the cloud is secure. Due to this need for confidence, trust is one of the major qualities that cloud service providers (CSPs) must build for cloud service users (CSUs). To do this, a model that all CSPs can follow must exist to establish a trust standard in the industry. If no concrete model exists, the future of cloud computing will be stagnant. This paper presents a new trust model that involves all the cloud stakeholders such as CSU, CSP, and third-party auditors. Our proposed trust model is objective since it involves third-party auditors to develop unbiased trust between the CSUs and the CSPs. Furthermore, to support the implementation of the proposed trust model, we rank CSPs according to the trust-values obtained from the trust model. The final score for each participating CSP will be determined based on the third-party assessment and the feedback received from the CSUs.