How third party auditing will be done in cloud computing with out taking copy of data?

Business owners have an ethical and legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality and privacy for their customers. In addition, protecting proprietary information is a financial necessity to prevent competitors from siphoning valuable information about product design and production.

When data is stored in the cloud, especially in large volumes, it is burdensome to download the information periodically to ensure the data is intact and uncompromised. It is expensive and time consuming to dedicate staff to review every detail; therefore third-party auditing protocols are implemented to verify the data is secure and undamaged.

Features for third-party auditing protocol include:

• The ability to challenge the system to ensure changes are either not allowed or tracked for analysis.
• Data is protected from view by the third-party verifying the data.
• Data blocks can be verified for integrity.

To implement a third-party audit for cloud computing operations, the owner of the data must set up a private key and a public key. The private key allows total access to the data stored in the cloud. The public key allows access to certain blocks of data (primarily through tags or other qualifiers) that the independent verifier will use to test the security, integrity and vulnerability of the data stored. By initiating challenges to the system, the verifiers can detect modifications, corrupt files and deletions.

Ignoring security assessment in cloud computing environments is risky business. The federal government has established a certification process for cloud vendors called

FedRAMP

to help improve the monitoring and security practices related to cloud storage. Protocols that actively search for vulnerabilities and engaging qualified, trustworthy third-party verifiers are intended to boost consumer confidence and protect privileges information from unauthorized access and corruption.

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