title: Legal issues in clouds: towards a risk inventory.
abstract: Cloud computing technologies have reached a high level of development, yet a number of obstacles still exist that must be overcome before widespread commercial adoption can become a reality. In a cloud environment, end users requesting services and cloud providers negotiate service-level agreements (SLAs) that provide explicit statements of all expectations and obligations of the participants. If cloud computing is to experience widespread commercial adoption, then incorporating risk assessment techniques is essential during SLA negotiation and service operation. This article focuses on the legal issues surrounding risk assessment in cloud computing. Specifically, it analyses risk regarding data protection and security, and presents the requirements of an inherent risk inventory. The usefulness of such a risk inventory is described in the context of the OPTIMIS project.
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. k.djemame@leeds.ac.uk
authors.forename: Karim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Djemame
authors.forename: Benno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Barnitzke
authors.forename: Marcelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Corrales
authors.forename: Mariam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kiran
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Django
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Armstrong
authors.forename: Nikolaus
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Forgó
authors.forename: Iheanyi
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Nwankwo