Author : A. Cecil Donald, A. Jenis and L. Arockiam

Cloud is a term defined as a pool of configurable computing resources that can be accessed by users based on a pay-as-you-go principle. Cloud computing is otherwise termed as internet computing because of its availability and that will be feasible only with the internet connection. Therefore, security plays a major role in cloud computing. Some of the important security services including encryption, authentication, integrity and confidentiality. This paper analyses various existing authentication mechanism and their issues. An enhanced authentication mechanism for identifying user in cloud environment is also proposed. The mechanism authenticates the user to access the appropriate cloud services. There are three main components involved in this framework namely User, Trusted Authenticator (TA) and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). The TA provides secure access to the user by generating the digital signature and credentials. In this paper, the steps for authenticating the users are also described.

Keywords: Authentication, Cloud Computing, Digital Signatures, Security, Trusted Authenticator (TA).

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.4, No.5 (Oct-2014)