Discuss about the Issues of Security and Privacy of Cloud Computing.
Cloud Computing is commonly known as “the cloud” and it is delivery of on-demand computing resources. This is an advanced technology and with this data and programs storage and access is done over internet not on local hard drive. Cloud is actually known as symbol of internet. In earlier days, hard drive was used to store data close to our computer and it can be accessed and used quickly by users. This is known as local storage and local computing. Everything that is required by user is close to him/her. But with local storage it is not possible for user to access data through internet or cloud. In this situation, cloud computing provides help to store data over network which can be accessed by anyone easily. Cloud applications have different applications such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. SaaS is Software as a Service which is run on unfriendly computers in cloud and these computers are owned and operated by others. PaaS cloud computing application support process of building and distributing cloud applications. There is no complexity in development and to manage cost of hardware, software and hosting components.
Next application of cloud is Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and it provides companies with computing resources including servers, networking, and storage and data center. In this way, this technology of cloud computing is considered beneficial for internet users. The purpose of making this report is to emphasize on security and privacy issues in cloud computing. Research on this topic is to build an understanding about information security. (Ibm.com, 2016)
In field of security and privacy for confidential information, cloud computing also plays an important role. It is considered a secured technology for storing data over network database. But today various security and privacy attacks are implemented by hackers to violate security of cloud environment. Next segment of report is a about issues of security and privacy of cloud computing. (PCMag India, 2016)
As we know that cloud computing has transformed the way of information technology but its issues of security and privacy are big barriers in this technology. There are number of security issues for cloud computing have seen those are related to network, databases, operating systems, resource scheduling transaction management and memory management. There are some essential areas of cloud computing where high level security is required to implement.( Technet.microsoft.com, 2016) These main areas are transit data security, authentication and authorization for users, applications and processes and cloud legal and regulatory issues and incident response. In cloud computing, for achieving security, traditional security parameters are used which are not so much beneficial for providing best security from vulnerable network attacks. There is no common cloud security standard and various additional challenges are associated with this. Some of cloud vendors implement their own proprietary standards and technologies that are required for security purposes. Both internal and external security standards are found in cloud computing. Following is the list of security and privacy issues of cloud computing. (Cepis.org, 2016)
Besides these above listed issues of cloud computing, following are some classifications of security and privacy issues of cloud computing.
These security issues are related to computer and network intrusions or attacks that are possible by moving data over cloud. In this case, it is possible to lock down information. The major concerning factors those come under this category are VM-Level Attacks, Cloud Service Providers Vulnerabilities and Phishing Cloud Provider.
The legal implications of applications and data are held by third party and these are complex and sometimes not easy to understand. When data is hold by third party then there is lack of control and transparency. There are various security and privacy issues exist those prompt companies to void these issues by building cloud framework. Third party control related issues consist of due diligence, auditability and contractual obligations.
This concern is related to critical applications and data. Under this category some essential security and privacy issues are included such as maintenance of uptime, prevention from denial of service attacks and surety of robustness of computational integrity.
These are some essential issues that are found in cloud computing environment by users. The threats of cloud computing are also come under cloud computing and in next segment of this report, we will emphasize on cloud security threats.
Threat of confidentiality of information in cloud computing is a big threat. Both internal and external threats of confidentiality have become problems for business organizations. Internal threats of insiders, access customer data that is held within cloud. In different applications of cloud such as in SaaS, customers of cloud and administrators can be considered as insiders, in PaaS developers of applications and test environment managers are insiders and in IaaS, third party platform consultants are insiders. These insiders can perform malicious activities to violate confidentiality of cloud environment. Cloud providers consists of large amount of confidential data such as credit card information, personal information and sensitive government information and intellectual property etc. and to collect this information, attackers conduct vulnerable attacks. Threats of hardware attack, social engineering and supply chain attacks are common external confidential attack in cloud environment. Next cloud threat is data leakage and this data threat is concerned with failure of access of security rights in case of multiple domains and physical transport systems that are required for backups and cloud data.
Integrity is related to verification that information is accessed by authorized users only. The violation of integrity is a big security threat for cloud users. This violation of integrity occurs due to incorrect security parameters and incorrect configuration of virtual machines and hypervisors. This is happened in case of data segregation. On other side, in case of user access, threat of loss of integrity is also high. This is happened due to poor identity and access management procedures. (Technet.microsoft.com, 2016)
Availability means information should be available to all authorized users, any unauthorized user must not be able to access this information. But in cloud environment, this is a bug threat or issue that is faced by users. The threats in availability of information in case of cloud environment occurs due to change in management. Change management actually introduces negative effects and this is happened due to software and hardware changes to existing cloud services. Besides this, change management, denial of service is also a big threat for availability of data. Due to this threat, attacker attacks on server with malware and all computers those are connected with server may not access information that is stored into it.
To handle above discussed issues of cloud computing there is requirement to use some essential technologies for its mitigation and these technologies include use of firewall, anti-virus and advanced network monitoring systems. The major application areas of these are web applications, software solutions and cloud based databases etc.
The main issue that is not discussed in this report is why cloud platforms are hacked and encountered these above discussed issues. This is an important topic to discuss here in this report. (Pearson, S. & Yee, 2013)
These are some essential threats that are faced by users of cloud computing and these all threats are serious and may cause vulnerable results for cloud users worldwide. Every cloud user or developer must have awareness about these threats. These threats are big barriers in usage of cloud computing. Actually these all are weak points of security and privacy of cloud environment. These above discussed all threats and issues of cloud must be mitigated, otherwise it may cause harmful impact on storage data into cloud database. It is responsibility of cloud providers and developers to reduce impacts of these threats and issues of cloud computing. (SearchCloudComputing, 2016)
After this whole discussion, we can say that cloud computing is a powerful platform, but due to its security and privacy issues, above discussed threats are faced. In this case, to mitigate this problem, developers of cloud framework and cloud service providers should make strategies or solutions. Otherwise, in future, this problem can be increased and will become difficult to control. Today most of the business organizations are based on cloud platform and they want improvement in security and privacy of their data that is available on network database. Advanced security tools and techniques must be used by developers to control security and privacy attacks on cloud environment. (Hamlen, K., Kantarcioglu, M., Khan, L., & Thuraisingham, 2010)
References
Ibm.com. (2016). IBM – What is cloud computing?. Retrieved 21 September 2016, from https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/what-is-cloud-computing
PCMag India. (2016). What Is Cloud Computing?. Retrieved 21 September 2016, from https://in.pcmag.com/networking-communications-software/38970/feature/what-is-cloud-computing
Cepis.org. (2016). Council of European Professional Informatics Societies – Cloud Computing Security and Privacy Issues. Retrieved 21 September 2016, from https://www.cepis.org/index.jsp?p=641&n=825&a=4758
Pearson, S. & Yee, G. (2013). Privacy and security for cloud computing. London: Springer.
Business in the cloud: what every business needs to know about cloud computing. (2011). Choice Reviews Online, 48(08), 48-4574-48-4574. https://dx.doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-4574
Knorr, E. (2016). What cloud computing really means. InfoWorld. Retrieved 22 September 2016, from https://www.infoworld.com/article/2683784/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means.html
Cloud computing – A simple introduction. (2016). Explain that Stuff. Retrieved 22 September 2016, from https://www.explainthatstuff.com/cloud-computing-introduction.html
SearchCloudComputing.(2016). Security issues in cloud computing. (2016). Retrieved 22 September 2016, from https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/tutorial/Security-issues-in-cloud-computing
Technet.microsoft.com. (2016). Cloud Computing: Privacy, confidentiality and the cloud | TechNet Magazine. Retrieved 22 September 2016, from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn235775.aspx
Sciencedirect.com. (2016). Privacy and security issues in cloud computing: The role of institutions and institutional evolution. Retrieved 22 September 2016, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596112000717
Pearson, S. & Yee, G. (2013). Privacy and security for cloud computing. London: Springer.
Hamlen, K., Kantarcioglu, M., Khan, L., & Thuraisingham, B. (2010). Security Issues for Cloud Computing. International Journal Of Information Security And Privacy, 4(2), 36-48. https://dx.doi.org/10.4018/jisp.2010040103
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