Trust Management in Cloud Computing

Abstract

Cloud computing is a model for enabling everywhere, suitable, on-demand network access. There are a number of challenges to provide cloud computing services and to accomplish this, it is necessary to establish trust across the cloud, between the user and the service provider. It is becoming increasingly complex for cloud users to make distinction among service providers offering similar kinds of services. There must be some mechanisms in the hands of users to determine trustworthiness of service providers so that they can select service providers with confidence and with some degree of assurance that service provider will not behave unpredictably or maliciously. An effective trust management system helps cloud service providers and consumers reap the benefits brought about by cloud computing technologies. Hence the objective of this chapter is to describe existing mechanisms that are used to determine a trust worthiness of a cloud service, various models that are used for calculating a trust value and method to establish trust management system.