Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

TL;DR

This paper details the deployment of a secure, multi-node OpenStack cloud infrastructure called BradStack, including security testing and practical guidelines for institutions seeking to implement secure cloud solutions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive case study on deploying and securing a multi-node OpenStack cloud platform with practical security validation methods.

Findings

Successful deployment of BradStack on OpenStack

Effective penetration testing validated security controls

Guidelines for secure cloud infrastructure implementation

Abstract

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.