Towards Configurable Cloud Application Security

Security solutions for cloud applications usually exploit security tools as is by utilising their default configuration. On one hand, this can lead to a waste of resources. On the other hand, it can also lead to not properly protecting the different application components based on their diverse security requirements. To this end, this paper proposes a security solution for cross-cloud applications which is configurable according to the flexible configuration specification given by the devops. Such a specification conforms to a certain UML-based meta-model and is independent of the underlying security tools exploited. In this way, devops can enable to produce a varied security level per each application component that better suits its security requirements. We demonstrate the suitability of our solution through an evaluation showcasing that it can lead to reduced resource consumption without compromising the security of the components that it protects.