A Practical Approach to Improve the Data Privacy of Virtual Machines

Cloud computing can provide users dynamically scalable, shared resources over the internet, but users usually fear about security threats and loss of control of data and systems. This paper presents a practical architecture to protect the data confidentiality for guest virtual machines. With this solution, even the cloud computing service providers cannot access the private data of their clients. This is very important and attractive for the cloud clients. In our work, we utilize virtualization technology and trusted computing technology to construct a secure and robust virtualization platform. On this platform, we customize the guest virtual machine operating system, strengthen the isolation between virtual machines, and therefore, greatly improve the data privacy of cloud services. With our solution, the cloud service provider can compromise the availability, but not the confidentiality of the guest virtual machines.