Accountability Through Transparency for Cloud Customers

Public cloud providers process data on behalf of their customers in data centres that typically are physically remote from their users. This context creates a number of challenges related to data privacy and security, and may hinder the adoption of cloud technology. One of these challenges is how to maintain transparency of the processes and procedures while at the same time providing services that are secure and cost effective. This chapter presents results from an empirical study in which the cloud customers identified a number of transparency requirements to the adoption of cloud providers. We have compared our results with previous studies, and have found that in general, customers are in synchrony with research criteria for cloud service provider transparency, but there are also some extra pieces of information that customers are looking for. We further explain how A4Cloud tools contribute to addressing the customers’ requirements.