Pattern-based and ISO 27001 compliant risk analysis for cloud systems

Abstract

For accepting clouds and using cloud services by companies, security plays a decisive role. For cloud providers, one way to obtain customers' confidence is to establish security mechanisms when using clouds. The ISO 27001 standard provides general concepts for establishing information security in an organization. Risk analysis is an essential part in the ISO 27001 standard for achieving information security. This standard, however, contains ambiguous descriptions. In addition, it does not stipulate any method to identify assets, threats, and vulnerabilities. In this paper, we present a structured and pattern-based method to conduct risk analysis for cloud computing systems. It is tailored to SMEs. Our method addresses the requirements of the ISO 27001. We make use of the cloud system analysis pattern, security requirement patterns, threat patterns, and control patterns for conducting the risk analysis. The method is illustrated by a cloud logistics application example.