Summary and Future Work

The adoption of cloud computing by the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, is proceeding quickly [1, 4, 8, 9] and is likely to become widespread [5]. As government becomes more comfortable with the technology, mission-oriented cloud computing seems inevitable. However, security remains a top threat to the use of clouds for dependable and trustworthy computing [6], even as FedRAMP [7] and other standards converge to a common set of requirements, as discussed in this chapter. The cloud computing environment is maturing, but we are observing the rise of new aspects of cloud computing – like mobiles interconnected into clouds, real-time concerns, edge computing, and machine learning – that are challenging the existing techniques for testing, validation, verification, robustness, and resistance to attack. As reflected in this book, academia and industry are attempting to respond quickly to rapidly changing cloud technologies, as driven by the value of these technologies in today's society.

The preceding chapters of this book have touched on many of the concerns arising from cloud technology: survivability, risks, benefits, detection, security, scalability, workloads, performance, resource management, validation and verification, theoretical problems, and certification. In this last chapter, we will consider what has been learned since 2007 and what issues and obstacles remain in any mission-critical system deployment on cloud computing.