The use of cloud storage systems has significantly increased in recent years. However, despite their widespread use and significance as the foundation for increasingly complex cloud services, current cloud storage systems are not built to take compliance with legal, organizational, or contractual requirements for data management into account. Compliance with data handling regulations becomes an important characteristic for cloud storage systems as government progressively responds to growing data protection and privacy concerns. We describe PRADA, a workable method for ensuring that key-value based cloud storage systems comply with data handling specifications. To do this, PRADA creates a transparent data handling layer that gives clients the ability to request specific data handling needs and gives cloud storage system operators the ability to adhere to them. PRADA is implemented on top of the distributed database Cassandra and we demonstrate in our study that it is feasible in real-world cloud deployments for microblogging, data sharing in the Internet of Things, and distributed email storage to adhere to data handling criteria in cloud storage systems.

Cloud Computing, Data Handling, Compliance, Load Balancing, Sharing Data, Cloud Storage Systems, Distributed Databases, Privacy, Public Policy Issues