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"Compared to Web services, Cloud services do not have a standard for service publication and registry. To establish a commoditized environment for the trade of Cloud services, a marketplace for Cloud service transaction is needed. This would assist both Cloud providers and Cloud consumers to locate other entities that might meet their expectations (Buyya et al., 2008). Several attempts have been made to aid the advertisement of, and access to, Cloud resources. For example, Akolkar et al. (2012) conducted a comprehensive analysis on the landscape of Cloud service marketplaces, summarized the key enablers for enhancing the robustness of the marketplace, and presented a prospective architecture based on the identified enablers. Menychtas et al. (in press) targeted the design of a comprehensive marketplace for Cloud applications. They emphasized the interrelations between technical and business service properties and defined a series of pricing models to adapt to different contexts and user requirements. Nevertheless, neither of the above architectures has been practically published and applied. The website of ‘Cloudservicemarket’ (Cloudservicemarket, 2014) makes the first effort to build a real platform for Cloud service providers on which they can publish their service information, and for Cloud service consumers to browse and rate services. At the time of accessing this site,, there were around 180 Cloud service providers registered on the market. For each registered service, there is a simple description of basic service information, e.g. service functions, system requirements, etc. The lack of detailed service QoS information makes it difficult for service users to make educated purchasing decisions, and the platform does not support any forms of querying – only a browsing vision is provided. It allows service users to rate and make comments on services, but there is no feedback from users. The work on establishing a robust Cloud marketplace with advanced querying and rating mechanisms still requires a great deal of attention by both academia and industry."
The fully distributed and open structure of cloud computing and services becomes an even more attractive target for potential intruders. It involves multi-mesh distributed and service oriented paradigms, multi-tenancies, multi-domains, and multi-user autonomous administrative infrastructures which are more vulnerable and prone to security risks. Cloud computing service architecture combines three layers of inter-dependent infrastructure, platform and application; each layer may suffer from certain vulnerabilities which are introduced by different programming or configuration errors of the user or the service provider. A cloud computing system can be exposed to several threats including threats to the integrity, confidentiality and availability of its resources, data and the virtualized infrastructure which can be used as a launching pad for new attacks (Cloud-Security-Alliance, 2010). The problem becomes even more critical when a cloud with massive computing power and storage capacity is abused by an insider intruder as an ill-intention party which makes cloud computing a threat against itself. Around last year (2011), a hacker used Amazon's Elastic Computer Cloud service to attack Sony's online entertainment systems by registering and opening an Amazon account and using it anonymously (Galante et al., 2011). Cloud services are as cheap and convenient for hackers as are for service customers. This malicious incidental attack on Sony compromised more than 100 million customer accounts, the largest data breach in the U.S. Lack of full control over the infrastructure is a major concern for the cloud services’ consumers. It signifies the role of IDPS in protecting the users’ information assets in cloud computing. This research amalgamates the challenges and issues banning further development of advanced IDPSs in a cloud computing environment. It aims to attract well-respected researchers’ attention to possible solutions of developing IDPSs by bringing the latest disparate research works together to shed light on securing the recent widespread cloud services and resources. Besides, it identifies desired IDPS requirements for cloud computing and suggests important implications for practice.