Visible to the public A Taxonomic Perspective on Certification Schemes: Development of a Taxonomy for Cloud Service Certification Criteria

TitleA Taxonomic Perspective on Certification Schemes: Development of a Taxonomy for Cloud Service Certification Criteria
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsSchneider, S., Lansing, J., Fangjian Gao, Sunyaev, A.
Conference NameSystem Sciences (HICSS), 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on
Date PublishedJan
Keywordsaudit process, Business, certification, certification schemes, certifiers, cloud computing, cloud computing standards, cloud providers, cloud service certification criteria, CSC design, CSC initiatives, Interviews, security, Standards, structural characteristics, taxonomic perspective, Taxonomy
Abstract

Numerous cloud service certifications (CSCs) are emerging in practice. However, in their striving to establish the market standard, CSC initiatives proceed independently, resulting in a disparate collection of CSCs that are predominantly proprietary, based on various standards, and differ in terms of scope, audit process, and underlying certification schemes. Although literature suggests that a certification's design influences its effectiveness, research on CSC design is lacking and there are no commonly agreed structural characteristics of CSCs. Informed by data from 13 expert interviews and 7 cloud computing standards, this paper delineates and structures CSC knowledge by developing a taxonomy for criteria to be assessed in a CSC. The taxonomy consists of 6 dimensions with 28 subordinate characteristics and classifies 328 criteria, thereby building foundations for future research to systematically develop and investigate the efficacy of CSC designs as well as providing a knowledge base for certifiers, cloud providers, and users.

DOI10.1109/HICSS.2014.614
Citation Key6759217