Security APIs for My Private Cloud-Granting access to anyone, from anywhere at any time

We describe a set of security APIs that grant federated access to a user’s cloud resources, and that also allow the user to grant access to his resources to anyone from anywhere at any time. The APIs implement federated access to clouds, fine grained access controls and delegation of authority. We have integrated these APIs into two cloud applications in order to validate their utility. This paper describes the conceptual model and architecture of the APIs, as well as their integration into the Eucalyptus S3 service. The paper concludes by specifying the current limitations.