Securing customer virtual machines in a multi-tenant cloud

摘要

A trusted virtualization platform protects sensitive customer data during operation of virtual machines in a multi-tenant cloud computing center. The trusted virtualization platform limits administrator access to the data and state of the virtual machines running thereon, reports any changes made thereto, and requires keys provided by the customer or a trusted third party of the customer to perform management operations on the virtual machines. By requiring cloud computing centers to use such trusted virtualization platforms, customers uploading their virtual machines into the cloud computing center can be assured that cloud administrators will not be able to access or tamper with their private data. Furthermore, customers can directly audit all important state or configuration changes for their virtual machines as the trusted virtualization platform can be configured to report all such changes according to a security policy set by the customer.