Title: Priority-based security-aware virtual machine allocation policy

Authors: Aparna Bhonde; Satish R. Devane

Addresses: Computer Science, Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Mumbai University, Sec 3, Airoli, Navi Mumbai, 400708, Maharashtra, India ' Computer Science, Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Mumbai University, Sec 3, Airoli, Navi Mumbai, 400708, Maharashtra, India

Abstract: Rapid expansion of cloud computing raises several issues, including loss of quality of service (QoS) due to resource sharing and increased security concerns to virtual machines (VMs) resulting from co-residency with other vulnerable VMs on the same physical machine (PM). However, due to lack of reliable security metrics and consolidation of VMs without awareness of security risk, cloud datacentre's threat score increases. We present a priority-based secure virtual machine allocation policy that calculates five-dimensional threat score and lowers the overall datacentre threat score after prioritising the threat score based on attack surface which reduces average value by 9% and maximum of 18% when compared with power aware best fit decreasing (PABFD) policy with maximum increase of 4% in energy consumption at priority (0.5, 0.3, 0.2) for network, VMM along with hosted VM's and PM respectively. The comparative analysis with similar security-based studies assures to deliver better service quality.

Keywords: virtual machine placement policy? coresidency? quality of service? datacentre threat score? threat assessment model.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2024.136715

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2024 Vol.23 No.1, pp.40 - 56

Received: 26 Sep 2022
Accepted: 20 Mar 2023

Published online: 19 Feb 2024 *

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