An Analysis of Open Standard Identity Protocols in Cloud Computing Security Paradigm

Abstract

Cloud computing enables businesses to use computing resources on-demand anywhere in the world without having to build and maintain computing infrastructures in-house. This model involves multiple parties performing diverse operations via the Internet across multiple organisations. Employees and consumers can access resources and services from their own and associated organisations. Despite the success of cloud computing, its security paradigm has one major challenge: how to determine the identity and access rights of users across all the organisations. The user's credential and sensitive information are always stored and maintained by the parent organisation, however, other partner organisations require verification of the user's identity and access rights to allow them to access their services and resources. The biggest difficulty is to communicate the user's identity to their partner organisations without sending their sensitive information. Numerous open standard identity protocols have been introduced in the last two decades. Amongst all, three standard identity protocols Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Open Authentication (OAuth), and OpenID Connect (OIDC) are the most established protocols in the cloud computing industry. Therefore, this paper presents a working prototype and critical analysis of these three open standard identity protocols SAML, OAuth and OIDC. It also explores evaluation criteria which are used for this analysis purpose. Finally, it discusses their strengths and limitations, and determines the most suitable open standard identity protocol for all types cloud computing models.