Bringing Accountability to the Cloud: Addressing Emerging Threats and Legal Perspectives

This paper is concerned with accountability in cloud ecosystems. The separation between data and data subjects as well as the exchange of data between cloud consumers and providers increases the complexity of data governance in cloud ecosystems, a problem which is exacerbated by emerging threats and vulnerabilities. This paper discusses how accountability addresses emerging issues and legal perspectives in cloud ecosystems. In particular, it introduces an accountability model tailored to the cloud. It presents on-going work within the Cloud Accountability Project, highlighting both legal and technical aspects of accountability.