Novel peer-to-peer reputation-based trust management model in a clout service provisioning environment

Abstract

In recent times, coupled with the emergence of the new cloud paradigm, a number of security related issues have emerged. Therefore, trust and reputation management has become unavoidable challenge in this new cloud computing paradigm. Cloud computing represents a service model that allows software, platform and infrastructure to be shared as a service, with high degree of openness and autonomy. Consequently, this high degree of openness and autonomy impose the need for surveillance of the services, and proffers nearly an ideal condition for a spread of unauthentic files. Although peer-to-peer (P2P) models and their applications are popular depending on their domain of applicability, protecting peer's security remain a challenge. As a result, this research dissertation reports on the development of a novel Peer-to-Peer reputation based trust management model in a cloud provisioning environment. As a proof of concept to validate the model, a simulation expe1iment in an environment involving two different peers (X and Y) and a service provider was setup using Cloud Analyst simulation tool. The results obtained from the simulation indicate that, during the interaction of peer X and peer Y, peer Y was found more trustworthy than peer X. This is because, while using the measured parameters as implied by the model, peer Y obtains a higher trust value when compared to peer X. Therefore, we conclude that, the higher the trust values obtained by a peer, the higher the level of trustworthiness.