CA Technologies conducts advanced research into Cloud Security

As part of a European Consortium, CA Labs, the research arm at CA Technologies, is conducting research and development for innovative solutions to address security challenges in multi-cloud environments. Horizon 2020 awarded a contract to the consortium to conduct the research.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research programme to date funded by the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness. With nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020), Horizon 2020 awarded the consortium a total of €3.5 million for this cloud security research project. The goal for Horizon 2020 is to bring to the market new breakthroughs uncovered from research and the lab.

“Cloud security must keep pace with the explosive growth in demand for cloud services, and this research will help steer the next generation of multi-cloud secure applications,” says Peter Matthews, vice president and research staff member, CA Labs. “CA Labs is immensely proud to be awarded this funding from the Horizon 2020 programme, and will be a key member of a consortium of partners to innovate multi-cloud secure application breakthroughs and discoveries that position European research at the vanguard of the cloud revolution.”

The consortium members joining forces with CA Labs in the three-year programme includes Tecnalia (Spain), CeRICT (Naples University in Italy), Montimage (France), Aimes, (UK), Lufthansa Systems AG (Germany) and Tampere University of Technology (Finland). The goal of the consortium is to research and develop a means for designing, monitoring and managing cloud security in the context of concurrent usage of multiple cloud services provided by different providers. The research also focuses on cloud data protection. For example, protecting data from unauthorised access, disclosure and modification, preventing unsanctioned access to cloud computing resources, and ensuring effective governance, control and compliance processes.

The research programme formally began in January 2015, and CA Labs will concentrate its research on multi-cloud secure deployment, the discovery of cloud resources based on security properties, decision support systems associated with the cloud resources and application requirements, and secure multi-cloud application deployment. As part of its research, CA Labs will also help define the security requirements and framework, monitoring and management tools post deployment and case study validation.

Commenting on the launch of the research, Marco Comastri, president EMEA, CA Technologies says, “Recent research commissioned by CA Technologies revealed that the major obstacle among organisations deploying cloud solutions was concerns over security. The breakthroughs and discoveries brought about by this Horizon 2020 programme and the research conducted by CA Labs will help alleviate those concerns by creating a security framework for distributed applications over heterogeneous cloud resources.”