Identity and access management in cloud environment: Mechanisms and challenges

Cloud computing is a complex system with combination of diverse networked devices that supports demanded services. The architecture of cloud computing consists of different kinds of configurable distributed systems with a wide variety of connectivity and usage. The organizations are adapting to cloud networks at a rapid pace due to the benefits like cost-effectiveness, scalability, reliability and flexibility. Though the primary merits of cloud computing are promising facts, cloud networks are vulnerable to various kinds of network attacks and privacy issues. The features like multi tenancy and the third party managed infrastructure in cloud environment necessitates the requirement of identity and access management mechanism. The problems involved in secure access to cloud resources have been addressed by many academicians and industry personnel. In this paper, the issues related to authentication, access management, security and services in cloud environment are surveyed along with the techniques proposed to overcome the same. A detailed comparative study of the existing techniques in the perspective of cloud service providers and cloud users that include identity and access management, security issues and services in the cloud environment are highlighted.