Deploying Trusted Cloud Computing for Data Intensive Power System Applications

Cloud computing deployment is gaining popularity among sensitive mission-critical sectors like the energy sector. Cloud computing can provide cost effective scalable deployment of ICT services and infrastructure to the energy sector. However, the security, confidentiality and integrity of data are paramount and are of great concern to the energy sector. This paper presents the deployment of trusted Cloud computing for mission critical applications in the energy sector. The research presented in this paper simplifies the integration of trusted platform module based integrity measurement into commodity cloud infrastructure by eliminating the need for "custom" software and patches; it also enhances instance-level security by including a distributed file and directory integrity checker for added security. The deployment of trusted cloud computing using the Eucalyptus Cloud software on server-grade hardware is discussed, as well as the results of a comparative evaluation of the additional overhead in instance creation/start-up based on a simulation of low, medium and high security settings. The trusted cloud computing infrastructure is also currently available for deployment and testing by power system application developers and users.