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Trust Attestation Service (Cope, Erl)

How can the security status of a cloud platform be communicated to cloud consumers?

Trust Attestation Service

Problem

Cloud platform security can be opaque to the cloud consumer that has compliance and regulatory security requirements. This can compromise the ability to verify the platform assurance level, which may be critical for some federal and regulated organizations.

Solution

An attestation service is implemented to maintain a trust policy for every attested host and to evaluate reports from the hardware roots of trust from trusted platform modules (TPMs) on each node to determine whether each node has undergone a trusted boot and is in compliance with the security policy.

Application

An attestation service provides assurance that the protected environment is correctly invoked using the TPM, measuring the integrity by validating digital signatures on the software running in the protected environment. An attestation identity key credential exchanged during a secure boot is used to establish mutual trust between the TPM and the attestation service. The orchestration engine uses the attestation service to select the appropriate compute platform required by workloads.

Trust Attestation Service: A trusted platform boot process.

A trusted platform boot process.

Trust Attestation Service: A secure boot with trust attestation.

A secure boot with trust attestation.


CloudSchool.com Cloud Certified Professional (CCP) Module 7: Fundamental Cloud Security
CloudSchool.com Cloud Certified Professional (CCP) Module 8: Advanced Cloud Security

This mechanism is covered in CCP Module 7: Fundamental Cloud Security and
in Module 8: Advanced Cloud Security.

For more information regarding the Cloud Certified Professional (CCP) curriculum, visit www.arcitura.com/ccp.


Cloud Computing Design Patterns

The architectural model upon which this design pattern is based is further covered in:

Cloud Computing Design Patterns by Thomas Erl, Robert Cope, Amin Naserpour

(ISBN: 9780133858563, Hardcover, ~ 528 pages)

For more information about this book, visit www.arcitura.com/books.