CloudMonitor: Data Flow Filtering as a Service

The primary concern of cloud service consuming organizations is the kind of control that they may have over their data. Companies are legally required to monitor a subset of the data that is crucial both to their business and customers. Conversely, the cloud service providers are not showing commitment towards securely handling enterprise data, and this may put sensitive data at risk. Hence, consumers are expected to maintain control over their sensitive data both at their local infrastructure and in the cloud. To achieve this, companies are practicing methods that would typically block access to cloud service that stores sensitive data at the network level. However, such restrictions may limit employee performance, and at the same time may not combat the malicious activities of bad employees. In this paper, we propose a model that allows consumers and providers the ability to transparently track the data in the cloud environment. The model allows consumers to have control over their data and conduct an audit to the treatment of their data by third-party services, while employees are allowed to use the cloud service.