Study seeks super secure cloud computing model

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An EU-backed consortium has been formed, designed to create a highly-secure cloud infrastructure model.

IBM will be one of the main players in the group, also known as Trustworthy Clouds or TClouds, alongside security firm Sirrix AG and other research organisations.

Portuguese energy and solution providers Energias de Portugal and EFACEC will help test out cloud models and their security credentials, as will San Raffaele Hospital in Italy.

The consortium will try to prove critical data can be moved to the cloud and kept secure.

Researchers hope the project will completed in September 2013.

Dr Matthias Schunter, technical leader for TClouds and computer scientist at IBM Research in Zurich, told IT PRO the initiative only came into existence around a month ago before being officially launched, but he hoped to see results soon.

“Our claim to fame is [going to be] to create a robust cloud to host critical stuff,” Schunter said.

“What we do is the technical bedrock. Our approach is technical from the bottom up.”

He hoped the findings would help produce an IBM product, although Schunter claimed it was more likely pieces of the study would be used in a future Big Blue technology.

Austrian firm Technikon Research and Planning will coordinate the TClouds project, while in the UK the University of Oxford will assist with the research.

"TClouds is the most innovative cloud security research project in Europe,” added Dr Klaus-Michael Koch, project coordinator at Technikon Research and Planning.

“Therefore, we have assembled a who's who of expertise to validate that these hosted environments are ready for industry's most secure and trusted data.”

This week also saw the Cloud Industry Forum launch its code of practice for cloud computing, covering three main pillars for vendors to adhere to: transparency, capability and accountability.

Read on for our special report on cloud computing.

For further coverage of cloud computing visit our sister site Cloud Pro.

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