Algorithm for Secure Hybrid Cloud Design Against DDoS Attacks

Abstract

This article describes how cloud computing has become a significant IT infrastructure in business, government, education, research, and service industry domains. Security of cloud-based applications, especially for those applications with constant inbound and outbound user traffic is important. It becomes of the utmost importance to secure the data flowing between the cloud application and user systems against cyber criminals who launch Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Existing research related to cloud security focuses on securing the flow of information on servers or between networks but there is a lack of research to mitigate Distributed Denial of Service attacks on cloud environments as presented by Buyya et al. and Fachkha, et al. In this article, the authors propose an algorithm and a Hybrid Cloud-based Secure Architecture to mitigate DDoS attacks. By proposing a three-tier cloud infrastructure with a two-tier defense system for separate Network and Application layers, the authors show that DDoS attacks can be detected and blocked before reaching the infrastructure hosting the Cloud applications.