A Cloud Provider Description Schema for Meeting Legal Requirements in Cloud Federation Scenarios

The advent of Cloud computing has created numerous significant challenges with regard to manipulation of data and especially personal data in cases of Clouds and federated Clouds. Existing legislation currently creates constraints and boundaries in the free usage of external Cloud providers. The aim of this chapter is to provide a schema definition and usage mechanism (CPDS) that includes various levels of legal information that is necessary for automating the process of Cloud provider selection and data outsourcing. Thus the aforementioned constraints may be checked in an automated and machine understandable fashion and fully harvest the potential that is created by advances in Cloud computing like dynamic federation. In this direction, legal gaps and necessary actions are identified so that the automation avoids manual and bureaucratic steps that are necessary at the moment.