A Brokerage Approach for Secure Multi-Cloud Storage Resource Management

Nowadays, more cloud customers are utilizing multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) to store their data in the cloud as it provides better data availability and service reliance than storing in the single CSP. However, there are several challenges faced by cloud customers to securely manage their cloud storage resources for cloud end-users (a user or a service) in the multi-cloud scenario, such as diverse APIs and service implementations in multiple CSP as CSP is not required to comply with cloud computing standards and multi-cloud resource management skill gap. In this paper, we present a unified multi-cloud storage resource management framework for managing cloud storage resources and their configurations for Object Storage and Identity and Access Management services following the cloud brokerage approach. We propose a unified cloud storage resource model continuing our previous work to tackle the various data and cloud access control models of cloud storage resources in multiple CSPs. Based on the unified model, we introduce a unified multi-cloud storage resource management platform to manage cloud storage resources and grant/revoke access for the cloud end-user developed for two popular public CSPs: Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. The unified platform collects and processes information about the cloud storage resources that allows cloud customers to discover, create, delete, modify, evaluate, and monitor cloud storage resources across various CSPs.