A Data Movement Policy Framework for Improving Trust in the Cloud Using Smart Contracts and Blockchains

Abstract

Trust in the cloud is still a problem. Most are in agreement that 'transparency' is key to cloud trust, but transparency applies to a variety of cloud operations, which is why cloud trust research is diverse. Widely publicized breaches recently had to do with third parties. Untrusted third parties and data movement are closely related. There are valid use cases to duplicate data for redundancy, but this typically happens behind closed doors. We see that as a problem; there are no mechanisms that we know of to police or track data as it gets copied or moves between clouds. We are proposing an approach to cloud trust that leverages the innovative blockchain technology to help increase transparency and also reduce the problem of depending on TTPs. By using a consumer belief model tailored to the cloud we also show the relevance of consumer policies in trust with regards to their data. We propose to use smart contracts as the vehicle for the policies and a belief/recommendation model to help guide us to a successful outcome.