Hardware-enhanced access control for cloud computing
Ruby B. Lee · 2012
Future trustworthy computer systems should provide built-in support for at least the cornerstone security properties of confidentiality, integrity and availability. Access control can help significantly towards achieving this. However, in today's computing landscape, traditional access control implemented only in software may be either insufficient or non-optimal. We discuss some of these situations. Furthermore, fine-grained access control and usage control mechanisms implemented in software are themselves subject to attack, and may impose heavy performance overheads. Can new hardware architecture improve the security achievable by software mechanisms for access control and usage control? If so, what types of hardware support are most useful while retaining the flexibility of software protection mechanisms? What can software do, to help hardware achieve the best results?