Security Issues of Outsourcing Business Process to Cloud Environment - Annotated Bibliography Example

References References Alsouri, S., Katzenbeisser, S., &Biedermann, S. September). Trustable outsourcing of business processes to cloud computing environments. In Network and System Security (NSS), 2011 5th International Conference on (pp. 280-284). IEEE. This paper addressed some security issues of outsourcing business process to cloud environment. It suggests that architecture should be developed on trusted technology. In this architecture the cloud provider generates secure execution logs that allow the customer to verify the correctness of outsourced process. The paper exhibits how such architecture can be implemented using virtual TPMs, Java and the ODE business process engine. ** an interesting paper that addressed some security issues of cloud computing and introduced new approach of building trustable computing technology. This paper supports the argument that my essay is based upon. Chi, C.H., Grossmann, G., Duipmans, Evert F., Ferreira Pires, Luis, & Bonino da Silva Santos, Luiz O. (2012). Towards a BPM cloud architecture with data and activity distribution. In Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops (EDOCW), 2012 IEEE 16th International. This paper provides a platform for business management and addressed the need for agility in business process. It helps business analysts to effectively design, deploy and execute business process in cloud environment. It also provides guidance and recommendation to business analysts who do not have programming expertise. The proposed platform automates manual steps by producing executable code and taking care of the problems of distributed deployment across cloud environment. ** useful paper as it is discusses the need for cloud base BPM in order to achieve competitive advantage. This paper raised very important point to my debate. Mell, P., &Grance, T. (2009). The NIST definition of cloud computing. National Institute of Standards and Technology, 53(6), 50. The paper is authored by Peter Mell and Timothy Grance of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It gives a wide definition of cloud computing, and provides details regarding characteristics and essential aspects of cloud computing and compares different cloud computing service model. *** very useful paper as it provides a reliable definition of cloud computing and provides insight regarding characteristics of cloud computing . It is a very popular paper which has been quite heavily cited with relevant and credible information. Duipmans, E., &Pires, L. F. (2012). Business process management in the cloud: business process as a service (BPaaS). University of Twente. This paper discusses the possibility of combining Business Process Management (BPM) with cloud computing. Both cloud computing and business process management are described in detail. The author also gives an overview of literature that discusses their combination and investigates already existing tools regarding the subject. ** an interesting paper that has been information regarding existing research and gave overview of existing cloud products. It is a very in-depth article that talks about cloud computing and BPM in more detail. While going through this article I paid special emphasis to findings from other research. Fischer, L. (2012). Delivering BPM excellence: Business process management in practice. Lighthouse Point, FL: Future Strategies Inc. In this book the author explains and clarifies the need for enterprise cloud computing to achieve competitive advantage. He also presents the difference between BPM and adaptive case management and gives an overview of the advantages of agile BPM. He then concludes with the winning case studies from the annual BPM awards. ** this book covers a wide range of topics relating to BPM. It is useful as it is one of the few books that paid emphasis on cloud based BPM as comparative advantage Martinho, D., Ferreira, D. R., & International Workshop on Business Process Management, BPM 2012. (February 06, 2013). Securely storing and executing business processes in the cloud. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 707-712. The paper introduces an architecture that allows the enterprise to securely rely on cloud based environment to store their business process. Security construction should take place on the proposed solution which is based on public key and symmetric cryptographic to maintain the confidentially. It depends on client application to manage both the execution of business process instances and the users access control lists. ** important paper as it addressed some security issues of cloud based BPM. It is useful as it offers an alternative view to many papers that have been authored on the same topic. Invensys Skelta. (2013). BPM on Cloud for the Enterprise. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.skelta.com/BPM-resources/downloads/whitepapers/Skelta-BPM-on-Cloud-for-the-Enterprise.pdf [Accessed: 22 Mar 2014]. The paper investigates the value of the cloud from enterprise perspective. It looks at cloud benefits, challenges experienced by enterprises with cloud based BMP and presents some success factor of cloud based BPM. *** The paper raised some points that were not raised by other authors including: cloud based computing for enterprise perspective. It is a very useful piece as It includesnumber of point that my essay is based on. Jiulei Jiang, Jiajin Le, Yan Wang, Jie Sun, and Feng He. (2011). The BPM Architecture Based on Cloud Computing. In Proceedings of the 2011 Fourth International Symposium on Knowledge Acquisition and Modeling (KAM 11). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 196-198. DOI=10.1109/KAM.2011.59 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/KAM.2011.59 The paper discusses the idea that cloud computing cannot replace traditional IT enterprise, but it will provide significant additional mode of service delivery which will help to overcome the obstacles of BPM adaption. The author explains the essential characteristics of cloud computing and how BPM will benefit from cloud computing. The author starts by outlining the obstacles of traditional BPM implementation such as the large capital outlay, IT resource procurement and maintenance, and then he explains how cloud computing will overcome many of challenges that stand in the way of adapting BPM projects. First he gives overview of cloud computing service model and the characteristics of cloud service. He then discuss how the integration of BPM and cloud computing will eliminate a lot of upfront capital expenditure of BPM adaption by providing economies of scale of shared IT infrastructure and also how cloud integration enables business process improvement by using external service provider rather than having to deal with all process functions internally. The author gives an overview of BPM architecture based on public infrastructure of cloud computing. From my point of view, while there is considerable pressure on enterprise to move their BMP to cloud to reduce the high investment of hardware and software, cloud computing itself introduces new concerns such as authentication and authorization. In addition, the database of cloud computing is based on a multilane environment which enables economies of scale as large number of virtual machine are located on a server. This may lead to over provision of resource and lack of availability. *** an important paper that offers useful insight of the challenges of adapting BPM. It provides very clear analysis and comparison to the traditional and cloud based BPM. One of author is Senior Scientist in University of Chicago and he has authored a number of scholarly articles in the same field. Lins, F., Medeiros, R., Silva, B., Souza, A., Aragão, D., Damasceno, J., ...&Li, J. (2011, July). Ssc4cloud tooling: An integrated environment for the development of business processes with security requirements in the cloud. In Services (SERVICES), 2011 IEEE World Congress on (pp. 53-60). IEEE. This paper proposes (Secure Service Composition for Cloud SSC4Cloud. SSC4Cloud is a model-driven service composition environment that enables multiple stakeholders to collaborate in order to identify business process with security requirements. It allows business and security experts to share the business process and security definition with others. The author present a useful case of (Virtual Travel Agency)VTA to show how business process model can be defined and executed in SSC4Cloud environment. The paper focuses onSSC4Cloud project. It offers an integrated cloud based environment to create and execute business process model with the enforcement of security requirement. It allows business and security experts to share the business process and security definition in the cloud in order to enrich the business process model. The author first present a useful case of Virtual Travel Agency to show how business process model can be defined and executed in SSC4Cloud environment and also introduces the stakeholders that are involved in the process. He defines four types of basic stakeholder; business expert, service expert, security expert and target platform expert. He then introduces the basic concept and security requirements of modeling that helps in understanding the paper. The author then gives a general overview of SSC4Cloud tool. The author suggests that security experts can share their security definition over the cloud but in my opinion security definitions are too sensitive to move it to cloud computing. If the cloud database is not designed properly, it could allow the hacker to break the encryption of the database operated by cloud provider and steal different security information and use it in a negative manner. *** an interesting article that present an environment for collaboratively model business processes with security requirement. It is useful as it showcases how cloud business process model can be executed in cloud environment. Chi, C.H., Grossmann, G., Duipmans, Evert F., Ferreira Pires, Luis, & Bonino da Silva Santos, Luiz O. (2012). Towards a BPM cloud architecture with data and activity distribution. In Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops (EDOCW), 2012 IEEE 16th International (pp. 165-171). IEEE. This paper looks at the benefits and the obstacles regarding cloud based BPM such as security, privacy and control. The papers purpose was to justify an approach to divide a business process into individual processes that can be executed in the cloud and on-premise, depending on sensitivity and performance requirements. Moreover, this paper shows that based on the user-defined activity distribution list, the original business process is usually transformed. The author argue that not all business activities can be benefit from cloud computing and some of them become more expensive such as computation intensive activities. He suggests that business process activities should be decompiled into at least two separated process by using tow process engine. The author also gives good comparison of the requirements for each cloud model and the challenges that have to be faced when moving an application to cloud. Then he identifies the four distribution pattern for the cloud processing engine activities; the traditional BPM solution, the pure cloud based BPM, on premise BPM with cloud distribution which is based on premise distribution and then he introduce fifth pattern in which process engine are explicitly placed in both sides and the business is transformed into separated process based on distribution list. This leads to better data output and less communication over network and this from my opinion is important to optimize business process .The writer concludes with the techniques for automate business process decomposition. I like the approach of divided business process into individual business process to execute in the cloud while remaining within the premise. I found that the enterprise can benefit from the best of both environments as the Enterprise can place their transactional data (sensitive data such as customer data) on premise and that will reduce the privacy and security concerns. On the other hand the less sensitive data and analytical data can be place in the cloud. That gives the enterprise the opportunities ofusing scalable resource in pay per use manner. *** an important article that proposes distribution solution for cloud based BPM that allow the enterprise to get benefits from cloud and on premise environment . It raised number of valid points that are not raised in other paper. References Alsouri, S., Katzenbeisser, S., &Biedermann, S. (2011, September). Trustable outsourcing of business processes to cloud computing environments. In Network and System Security (NSS), 2011 5th International Conference on (pp. 280-284). IEEE. Chi, C.H., Grossmann, G., Duipmans, Evert F., Ferreira Pires, Luis, & Bonino da Silva Santos, Luiz O. (2012). Towards a BPM cloud architecture with data and activity distribution. In Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops (EDOCW), 2012 IEEE 16th International. Chi, C.H., Grossmann, G., Duipmans, Evert F., Ferreira Pires, Luis, & Bonino da Silva Santos, Luiz O. (2012). Towards a BPM cloud architecture with data and activity distribution. In Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops (EDOCW), 2012 IEEE 16th International (pp. 165-171). IEEE. Duipmans, E., &Pires, L. F. (2012). Business process management in the cloud: business process as a service (BPaaS). University of Twente. Fischer, L. (2012). Delivering BPM excellence: Business process management in practice. Lighthouse Point, FL: Future Strategies Inc. Invensys Skelta. (2013). BPM on Cloud for the Enterprise. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.skelta.com/BPM-resources/downloads/whitepapers/Skelta-BPM-on-Cloud-for-the-Enterprise.pdf [Accessed: 22 Mar 2014]. Jiulei Jiang, Jiajin Le, Yan Wang, Jie Sun, and Feng He. (2011). The BPM Architecture Based on Cloud Computing. In Proceedings of the 2011 Fourth International Symposium on Knowledge Acquisition and Modeling (KAM 11). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 196-198. DOI=10.1109/KAM.2011.59 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/KAM.2011.59 Lins, F., Medeiros, R., Silva, B., Souza, A., Aragão, D., Damasceno, J., ...&Li, J. (2011, July). Ssc4cloud tooling: An integrated environment for the development of business processes with security requirements in the cloud. In Services (SERVICES), 2011 IEEE World Congress on (pp. 53-60). IEEE. Martinho, D., Ferreira, D. R., & International Workshop on Business Process Management, BPM 2012. (February 06, 2013). Securely storing and executing business processes in the cloud. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 707-712. Mell, P., &Grance, T. (2009). The NIST definition of cloud computing. National Institute of Standards and Technology, 53(6), 50. Read More