A Conceptual Framework for Accountability in Cloud Computing Service Provision
This addresses the need for clear accountability standards in cloud computing, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing literature without introducing new methods or data.
The paper tackles the problem of defining accountability for cloud computing service providers by identifying four necessary conceptual factors: responsibility, assurance, transparency, and remediation, and concludes that all four must be implemented and demonstrable for an organization to be considered accountable.
This paper uses a comprehensive review of the academic and professional literature in relation to accountability in the area of cloud computing service provision. It identifies four key conceptual factors that are necessary for an organisation to be considered as accountable. The four factors were found to be: responsibility, assurance, transparency and remediation. A key finding of the paper is that in order to be considered as an accountable cloud service provider, all four factors need to be implemented and be demonstrable by the organisation.