Cloud Computing and Security

Cloud computing can be stated as the shared pools of the configurable resources of computer system as well as high level services, which could be rapidly provisioned with extremely less effort of management over the Internet connection (Rong, Nguyen and Jaatun 2013). This technology of cloud computing majorly relies on the resource sharing for the core purpose of achieving coherence or economies of scales. The third party clouds eventually enable the organizations for focusing on the major businesses and not on expending the resources on the computer maintenance and infrastructure. This cloud computing also enables the organizations for avoiding or minimizing the upfront costs of IT infrastructure (Almorsy, Grundy and Müller 2016). The applications could be easily run with the help of this technology and hence security and privacy are important. The following report outlines a brief description of cloud privacy and security with relevant details.

The cloud computing security is the specified set of several control based policies and technologies that are eventually designed for adhering to the rules of regulatory compliance and hence protecting the information, applications of data or infrastructure that is associated with the utilization of cloud computing (Aljawarneh 2013). Since, the nature of the cloud is of shared resources, the identity management, access controls and privacy controls are the concerns faced by its users. Moreover, the organizations that are utilizing cloud computing as well as the associated providers of cloud for the data operations, privacy and security are kept on top priorities. These are often termed as extremely vulnerable in respect to other technologies (Chou 2013). The major processes of cloud computing security is responsible for addressing each and every security control, which is often incorporated by the cloud provider for the significant maintenance of data security, compliance and privacy with the required regulations. These processes would even involve the data backup planning and business continuity planning for solving against the cloud security breaches.

The cloud storage is extremely convenient and hence provides proper access to data to the users, irrespective of the time and device. The security of cloud storage is considered as one of the major concerns in the IT department or security department of all organizations (Zhao, Li and Liu 2014). The advantages that are substantially brought by the cloud storage are scalability or accessibility and even reduced IT overheads. A rapid adoption is being driven at the enterprises in the world for undertaking them to improvise the security of cloud storage and hence sensitive or confidential data is kept safe and secured within the cloud.

Cloud Storage Security

Cloud storage security is extremely important and significant for all types of organizations or enterprises (Mishra et al. 2013). These enterprises eventually utilize the cloud services since they provide quite flexible as well as cost effective alternatives to the locally implemented or expensive hardware. The respective business within cloud refers to the fact that the sensitive data or files are completely exposed to the newer risks since the cloud stored data substantially resides outside of the limits of the safeguards, utilized for protecting these data. There is a core responsibility of data security for providers of cloud storage (Salah et al. 2013). With the cloud storage security, the users could easily enjoy the overall flexibility and performance of cloud.

There are some of the major and the most significant advantages of cloud security and privacy. These specific advantages are as follows:

1. i) Protection of Data: The first and the foremost advantage of the cloud privacy and security is that it provides utmost protection to the confidential data or information of its users (Sachdev and Bhansali 2013). Moreover, these data are protected with in-built firewalls in the cloud.
2. ii) Prevention of Data Breaching: The next important and significant advantage of this cloud security and privacy is that it helps in the proper prevention of data breaches. Hence, the users do not face any type of issues related to data breaching.

iii) Disaster Recovery Planning: Another specific benefit of the cloud security and privacy is provides disaster recovery planning for the data (Tari 2014). This refers to the fact that even if there is any type of issue regarding data corruption or data breaching, the users have the scope of recovering the confidential data easily and promptly.

1. iv) Cost Effectiveness: The fourth advantage of this type of security to the cloud is that it is extremely cost effective and hence could be utilized by all. Moreover, the complexity of this technology security is also much lower in comparison to others.
2. v) Implements Baseline Protection: Cloud privacy and security even is responsible for implementing the baseline protection to the platforms or data that are being processed (Kalaiprasath, Elankavi and Udayakumar 2017). Furthermore, the proper authentication, access controls or encryption are also implemented for this type of protection of data with cloud security.
3. vi) Protection Against Failure of Hardware: The sixth important advantage of the cloud security and privacy is that it helps in the proper protection against the failure of hardware. The hardware failure is one of the most common issues faced in IT departments and hence it could be easily and properly resolved with the help of cloud security and privacy.

In spite of having all the above mentioned distinct advantages, the cloud security and privacy comprises of some of the major and noteworthy challenges that are extremely dangerous for the organizations, utilizing cloud computing in their businesses (Zhao, Li and Liu 2014). These distinct and popular challenges of the cloud security and privacy are as follows:

i) Dependency on Vendors: Since, cloud computing is used after the proper involvement of vendors, the users are completely dependent on the vendors and hence this is extremely dangerous for the users.

ii) No Control of Data Access: The second noteworthy disadvantage of the cloud security and privacy is that there is absolutely no control of the data access (Almorsy, Grundy and Müller 2016). This refers to the fact that the employees could easily take the confidential data for any kind of data breaching and hence the organizational data would be breached eventually.

iii) Reduction of Service Quality: Due to the over protection and over security of cloud, the vendors could easily degrade the quality of their services and this would lead to some of the most significant problems for the users.

iv) Usability: Another distinct disadvantage of the cloud security is its usability. When any document is dragged or dropped into the folder of cloud storage, substantially permanently moves that document from the original folder to the location of cloud storage (Rong, Nguyen and Jaatun 2013). Hence, the original location of the document is lost.

Conclusion

Therefore, from this above discussion, it can be concluded that cloud computing is the significant delivery of the hosted services that are provided to the users on the Internet. This particular technology substantially enables the organizations in consuming the computing resources like virtual machines, storages and applications. Hence, building and maintaining the computing infrastructures is much easier with cloud computing. The technology is responsible for boasting various important advantages for the businesses like self service provisioning, elasticity, pay as per user, resilience of workload, flexibility in migration and many more. Cloud security can be referred to as the broader set of technologies, controls and policies that are being deployed for the proper protection and security of applications, data or associated infrastructures of the technology of cloud computing. This is the sub domain of the computer security, information security and network security. The above report has properly described the cloud privacy and security.

References

Aljawarneh, S., 2013. Cloud security engineering: Avoiding security threats the right way. In Cloud Computing Advancements in Design, Implementation, and Technologies (pp. 147-153). IGI Global.

Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Müller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.

Chou, T.S., 2013. Security threats on cloud computing vulnerabilities. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology, 5(3), p.79.

Kalaiprasath, R., Elankavi, R. and Udayakumar, D.R., 2017. Cloud. Security and Compliance-A Semantic Approach in End to End Security. International Journal Of Mechanical Engineering And Technology (Ijmet), 8(5).

Mishra, A., Mathur, R., Jain, S. and Rathore, J.S., 2013. Cloud computing security. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication, 1(1), pp.36-39.

Rong, C., Nguyen, S.T. and Jaatun, M.G., 2013. Beyond lightning: A survey on security challenges in cloud computing. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 39(1), pp.47-54.

Sachdev, A. and Bhansali, M., 2013. Enhancing cloud computing security using AES algorithm. International Journal of Computer Applications, 67(9).

Salah, K., Calero, J.M.A., Zeadally, S., Al-Mulla, S. and Alzaabi, M., 2013. Using cloud computing to implement a security overlay network. IEEE security & privacy, 11(1), pp.44-53.

Tari, Z., 2014. Security and Privacy in Cloud Computing. IEEE Cloud Computing, 1(1), pp.54-57.

Zhao, F., Li, C. and Liu, C.F., 2014, February. A cloud computing security solution based on fully homomorphic encryption. In Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), 2014 16th International Conference on (pp. 485-488). IEEE.