The OASIS international open standards consortium has launched the Cloud Authorization (CloudAuthZ) Technical Committee, a project to develop enhanced models for managing authorizations and entitlements in SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS contexts. The goal of CloudAuthZ is to provide greater control of the way cloud computing resources are used. It will enable contextual information (such as where users are, what they are doing, which device they are using, etc.) to inform authorization decisions.

CloudAuthZ will define configurations of existing standards, such as OAuth, SCIM, and XACML, to provide mechanisms for enabling the delivery of cloud contextual attributes to Policy Enforcement Points. This will allow cloud infrastructures to provide--in real time--a subset of contextual entitlements sets that can be used to authorize or deny a Consumer’s use of a specific resource.

Bank of America’s Radu Marian co-chairs the OASIS CloudAuthZ Technical Committee. He explained, “CloudAuthZ will reduce the need for customized interactions between customer and vendor systems and so decrease the overhead of supporting authorization and entitlement. It will also enhance portability across multiple systems.”

“CloudAuthZ profiles will allow cloud providers to enforce authorization policies in the most optimal way possible,” added Anil Saldhana of Red Hat, who also co-chairs the OASIS group.

Contributions of relevant use cases for CloudAuthZ are welcome. New members are encouraged to join the Technical Committee at any time. Archives of the work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS invites public review and comment on the work.

Support for CloudAuthZ

Red Hat
"Security and authorization are fundamental challenges that need resolving in any system and cloud is no different. As a cloud leader, Red Hat is fully committed to addressing these problems in standards and open source. We are happy to support the creation of the CloudAuthZ Technical Committee and will be working to help it succeed."
--Mark Little, vice president, Engineering, Middleware Engineering, Red Hat

SailPoint
"Providing a flexible, extensible and open authorization model is key to the deployment of high-value applications in the cloud. The CloudAuthZ Committee will help profile the flow and use of key entitlement giving attributes. Standardizing this process will greatly enhance the governance and compliance process for secure reliable cloud-based applications."
-- Darran Rolls, CTO, SailPoint

ViewDS
"ViewDS is pleased to participate on the OASIS CloudAuthZ Technical Committee. We see the task of standardizing the management and enforcement of access to cloud resources, especially for mobile clients, as critical to the evolution of corporate computing. We look forward to applying our real-world experience with our Access Sentinel XACML authorization technology to this effort."
--Gil Kirkpatrick, CTO, ViewDS Identity Solutions

Additional information:
OASIS CloudAuthZ Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/cloudauthz/

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for cloud computing, security, privacy, content technologies, business transactions, the Smart Grid, emergency management, and other applications. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. OASIS members broadly represent the marketplace of public and private sector technology leaders, users, and influencers. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

http://www.oasis-open.org