Securing mission-centric operations in the cloud

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the use of Cloud Computing facilities to execute critical missions. However, due to their inherent complexity, most Cloud Computing services are vulnerable to multiple types of cyber-attacks and prone to a number of failures. Current solutions focus either on the infrastructure itself or on mission analysis, but fail to consider the complex interdependencies between system components, vulnerabilities, failures, and mission tasks. In this chapter, we propose a different approach, and present a solution for deploying missions in the cloud in a way that minimizes a mission's exposure to vulnerabilities by taking into account available information about vulnerabilities and dependencies. We model the mission deployment problem as a task allocation problem, subject to various dependability constraints, and propose a solution based on the A algorithm for searching the solution space. Additionally, in order to provide missions with further availability and fault tolerance guarantees, we propose a cost-effective approach to harden the set of computational resources that have been selected for executing a given mission. Finally, we consider offering fault tolerance as a service to users in need of deploying missions in the Cloud. This approach allows missions to obtain required fault tolerance guarantees from a third party in a transparent manner.