A proposal of a cloud-oriented security and performance simulator provided as-a-service

The widespread diffusion of cloud computing is still slowed down by security and performance concerns. As a matter of fact, issues such as security and confidentiality of data on one hand, fluctuating performance on the other are still limiting factors for the switch from on-premise to cloud-hosted environments. This paper sketches the structure of a platform offering simulation services able to deal with both problems. Given the structure of a cloud application by means of a graph-based model, the simulator can help to discover and correct potential security and performance problems by using simulation combined with novel techniques for the verification of coverage of the application security requirements.