Clouds of Things Need Information Flow Control with Hardware Roots of Trust

Abstract

There is a clear, outstanding need for new security mechanisms that allow data to be managed and controlled within the cloud-enabled Internet of Things. Towards this, we propose an approach based on Information Flow Control (IFC) that allows: (1) the continuous, end-to-end enforcement of data flow policy, and (2) the generation of provenance-like audit logs to demonstrate policy adherence and contractual/regulatory compliance. Further, we discuss the role of Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) in supporting such a system, by providing hardware roots of trust. TPMs can be leveraged to validate software configurations, including the IFC enforcement mechanism, both in the cloud and externally via remote attestation.

Publication
In Cloud Computing Technology and Science, IEEE.