Automated Certification for Compliant Cloud-based Business Processes

A key problem in the deployment of large-scale, reliable cloud computing concerns the difficulty to certify the compliance of business processes operating in the cloud. Standard audit procedures such as SAS-70 and SAS-117 are hard to conduct for cloud-based processes. The paper proposes a novel approach to certify the compliance of business processes with regulatory requirements. The approach translates process models into their corresponding Petri net representations and checks them against requirements also expressed in this formalism. Being based on Petri nets, the approach provides well-founded evidence on adherence and, in case of noncompliance, indicates the possible vulnerabilities.