Secure Resource Management in Cloud Computing: Challenges, Strategies and Meta-Analysis

2025-02-05

IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems

AI Summary

To address the insufficient research on Secure Resource Management (SRM) in cloud computing, this paper systematically identifies core security challenges arising during cloud workload execution and resource scheduling. It introduces, for the first time, a three-dimensional taxonomy of cybersecurity countermeasures for cloud resource management—categorizing strategies as defensive, mitigative, or hybrid—and conducts cross-strategy empirical evaluation on a unified simulation platform using real-world VM execution traces. By integrating system security modeling, strategy taxonomy, and quantitative performance analysis, the study uncovers fundamental trade-offs among security assurance, runtime overhead, and response latency across the three strategy classes, and derives dynamic-load-aware secure resource scheduling principles. The work provides a reproducible empirical foundation and methodological framework for designing cloud-native security architectures. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty
• Application Domains: Security
• Computer Vision: Adversarial Attacks & Robustness

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures

Abstract

Secure resource management (SRM) within a cloud computing environment is a critical yet infrequently studied research topic. This paper provides a comprehensive survey and comparative performance evaluation of potential cyber threat countermeasure strategies that address security challenges during cloud workload execution and resource management. Cybersecurity is explored specifically in the context of cloud resource management, with an emphasis on identifying the associated challenges. The cyber threat countermeasure methods are categorized into three classes: defensive strategies, mitigating strategies, and hybrid strategies. The existing countermeasure strategies belonging to each class are thoroughly discussed and compared. In addition to conceptual and theoretical analysis, the leading countermeasure strategies within these categories are implemented on a common platform and examined using two real-world virtual machine (VM) data traces. Based on this comprehensive study and performance evaluation, the paper discusses the trade-offs among these countermeasure strategies and their utility, providing imperative concluding remarks on the holistic study of cloud cyber threat countermeasures and secure resource management. Furthermore, the study suggests future methodologies that could effectively address the emerging challenges of secure cloud resource management.

Problem

• Secure resource management in cloud computing
• Cyber threat countermeasure strategies
• Performance evaluation of cloud security methods

Innovation

• Cloud threat countermeasure strategies
• Comparative performance evaluation
• Real-world VM data traces