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3.3 Terminate an Account

****WORKING DOCUMENT****

3.3      Terminate An Account

Actors:  unidentified-user, cloud-subscriber, cloud-provider.

Goals:  Cloud-provider terminates a cloud-subscriber's account.

Assumptions: A cloud-provider determines that a cloud-subscriber's account should be terminated per the terms of the SLA.  The issue of multiple accounts for a cloud-subscriber is not considered part of the scope of this use case, nor is the issue of retaining sufficient information to recognize an abusive cloud-subscriber trying to create a new account to continue the abuse.

Success Scenarios: (terminate, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS): Possible reasons for termination may be that the cloud-subscriber has violated acceptable usage guidelines (e.g., by storing illegal content, conducting cyber attacks, or misusing software licenses), or that the cloud-subscriber is no longer paying for service.  The cloud-provider sends a notice to the cloud-subscriber explaining the termination event and any actions the cloud-subscriber may take to avoid it (e.g., paying overdue bills, deleting offending content) or to gracefully recover data.  Optionally, the cloud-provider may freeze the cloud-subscriber's account pending resolution of the issues prompting the termination.

If the cloud-subscriber can pay for disposition of data currently stored in the cloud-provider's system, and performing the requested disposition actions is legal, the cloud-provider performs the requested actions, charges the cloud-subscriber according to the terms of the service, notifies the cloud-subscriber that the account has been terminated, deletes the cloud-subscriber's payment information from the cloud-provider's system, and revokes the cloud-subscriber's identity credentials.  At this point, the cloud-subscriber becomes an unidentified-user. 

Failure Conditions and Handling:  If a cloud-subscriber prevents the termination by correcting the reason for termination (e.g., paying a late bill), then that could be seen as a failure of the use case in the sense that the termination does not occur.

Credit: Various cloud-provider SLAs and customer agreements

Created November 1, 2010, Updated March 23, 2018