Identity management in cloud platforms using VOMS and SPID

Cloud computing is being adopted more and more in recent years. It offers several benefits, such as high elasticity, availability and cost reduction, but yet presents some issues. Among the most important, the potential lack of security can affect the spreading of this technology. As cloud computing is pushing forward to the digital era, where users can have their own digital identity to access restricted resources or services, a reliable authentication and authorization system would attract more users to get involved in such process. This paper proposes an integration of the VOMS (Virtual Organization Membership Service) system for authorization and SPID (Sistema Pubblico per la gestione dell'Identità Digitale) system for authentication, within Cloud Foundry PaaS (Platform as a Service) model. Considerations, differences and interoperability matters will be addressed in order to provide a comprehensive scheme.