An intelligent cloud firewall framework for multi-cloud security using lstm anomaly detection and federated learning

The evolving nature of the threat landscape against cloud services is outpacing the capabilities of traditional security measures. Current firewall implementations in cloud services may provide a foundational layer of security, but they have significant limitations regarding their ability to respond to recently identify zero day vulnerabilities and to protect sensitive information from potential attacks utilizing quantum computing, as well as validating audit logs in multi-tenanted, shared cloud service landscapes. In this research, we present an innovative integrated approach to addressing each of these limitations by combining AI driven Anomaly detection techniques with post quantum cryptography authentication, a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), and blockchain based audit logging. Our proposed AI enhanced cloud firewall uses a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) deep learning model to analyze and classify traffic patterns across IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments and dynamically creates adaptive firewall policies with sub-second response times. Experimental testing on simulated cloud traffic sets demonstrated that our proposed framework achieved a detection rate of 94.7% and a False Positive Rate (FPR) of 2.1%, representing improvements of 24.7% and 12.9%, respectively, when compared to traditional rule-based firewalls. Additionally, the blockchain anchored audit logging mechanism will create tamper proof audit logs, and the post-quantum cryptography layer will prevent attacks using the CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium algorithms. These test results demonstrate that our proposed framework is a scalable, resilient, and security hardened solution for future generations of cloud computing landscapes.