Next-Generation Blockchain-Enabled Virtualized Cloud Security Solutions: Review and Open Challenges

Abstract

Cloud computing is a well-known technology that provides flexible, efficient, and cost-effective IT solutions for multinationals to offer improved and enhanced quality of business services to end-users. The cloud computing paradigm is instigated from the grid and parallel computing models. It uses virtualization, server consolidation, utility computing, and other computing technologies and models for providing better IT solutions for large-scale computational data centres. It encompasses different services for supporting data storage, networking, and computing for facilities and amenities for businesses and multinational corporations. The enormous elastic on-demand cloud provisioning resources and services and datasets are processed and stored in tier-level virtualized cloud data centres operated by third-party service providers called cloud owners. The primary issue with these cloud service providers is to provide and maintain data security, privacy, and confidentiality and service availability and data support for end-users. This paper reviews, highlights, and discusses some of the common cloud computing vulnerabilities primarily related to virtualization platforms and their implementations while outsourcing services and resources to different end-users and business enterprises. We then provided blockchain-enabled solutions for virtualized cloud platforms involving both the end-users and cloud service providers (CSP) to address and solve various security and privacy-related vulnerabilities. These solutions will help the data centre industry to improve its virtualized cloud services and resource provisioning facilities. Finally, we discussed different blockchain-related implementation challenges in cloud infrastructures.