Comparative Analysis of Access Control Systems on Cloud

Cloud computing, a relatively new concept and has gained an immense attention of research community in the past few years. R&D organizations and industry are investing a lot in cloud based research and applications. Similarly on theconsumers´ side organizations are moving their business on cloud to provide flexibility and conceive ever increasing computational power requirements. In spite of significant advantages, and its demand, different stakeholders are still reluctant to migrate to cloud. A major hindrance is the absence of reliable and comprehensive access control mechanism for cloud resources. We have analyzed existing cloud based access control systems and evaluated those using NIST defined access control systems evaluation criteria. Based on our analysis we have proposed future research direction in the domain of access control systems for cloud based environments, which will eventually pave the way towards cloud adoption.