Risks and Threats related to Cloud Computing Technology

The responsibility of Land Titles Agency is to maintain the land registry details of block of lands that are either sold or transferred from one owner to any new owner.  The role of the agency is to keep the records of all the block of lands that are newly bought and sold. They create new registered certificates for the new land owners. These certificates ensure the proof for land ownership. In order to verify the identification of every person the agency needs to deal with large number of lawyers and conveyancers as well (Ibrahim et al., 2018). With the changing time the number of information regarding the legal certificates and ownership are also increasing.  In order to deal properly with the information it has become important for the agency to change their operational environment from the general to cloud based. The agency is willing to upgrade their system from the current one to a public cloud based one. It is found that, the upgraded system will help the agency to increase its operational, functional and business efficiency. The threats and risks that may occur due to these changes are developed (Serhani, Atif & Benharref, 2014). In addition to this, the risk and threats identified in this case include both privacy and data protection and elaborated in the below section:

Risk assessment

Features	Subcharacteristics	Cloud risks Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper
Functionality	Business requirement suitability	The developed functional solution may not meet the business requirements.
	correctness	The system may fail to meet  the system and business requirements
	Interoperability	The system may fail to fulfill the need of IT architectural needs, interface and data migration needs.
	Compliance risks considering policy and regulations	Regulatory compliances
Reliability	Risks with the offered maturity model	Quality issues
	Fault tolerance	Business continuity and resilience risks
Usability	Technical understanding of the associates users	Inadequate people may fail to reach the business requirements
Efficiency	Learning ability	Network management and data integration risks

During development of Threat and Risk Assessment (TRA), some measures are there to be considered by the agency. For protecting confidential information from the external attackers the overall road map for migration to cloud computing should focus on certain factors n terms of vision, visibility, accountability and sustainability (Elmubarak, Yousif & Bashir, 2017).  Apart from this, other features that are to be considered for managing data include confidentiality, integrity and availability. Significant remediation and approve can provide effective control over the activities of the agencies. The technical review should be served over the agency security model. Matured IT processing should be followed accordingly by the agency to gain measurable resultants.  

Privacy for the data: Cloud computing technology has been identified as a boon for the millennial and technical world for very obvious reason. Only data storage and data management are not the privacy actions but also it gives the users high time data access capabilities. The users can access needful data from the server regardless of time and location (Pham et al., 2017). The security related issues are categorized in security concerns faced by consumers and the consumers. the providers should make sure that the infrastructure they have developed is completely secured and the data of the users are absolutely protected.

Privacy for the Data

 Data protection: In order to protect server data two different technologies should be followed by the agency are encryption and application firewall. With the help of encryption technology none of the unauthenticated and unauthorized user will be able to access data from the server without permission. The data transmission channel will also be secured and the unwanted users can not access the transmission channel (Hussain, Hussain & Hussain, 2014). It will give high time as well as sustainable protection to the agency. The agency can avoid loss of sensitive data, malware infection, hacked interface, violation of existing regulatory controls etc.

Two different architecture models exist such as one SP and Many SP’s, which are followed by the business organizations. Security challenges are referred to as the most highlighted obstacles that are required to be resolved from the core operational system.  Cloud computing technology is a prevalent IT outsourcing paradigm that entails high security level risks. The operational and functional capabilities of these two models are given in the below section:

SaaS (software as a service): Software as a Service (SaaS) is an on demand software which is used for licensing and delivery model where a completely functional software product can be successfully delivered.  Through the help of the web Browsers the users can access the SaaS offerings. This platform is secured for storing confidential information. The SaaS providers are allowed to host application and also make the host available for the users with the internet, frequently browser based interface (Skourletopoulos et al., 2015). The common example of the SaaS platform users are Google apps, Drop box, Cisco WebEx concur etc. SaaS platform is managed from the centralized location and hosted professionally on remote server. This platform is accessible over the internet service. However the users are not responsible for updating software and hardware updates.

Platform as a service (PaaS): PaaS provides the users different cloud components for limited numbers of software when those are used for different operation and applications. In order to create customized application PaaS gives the software developers an accurate framework also. Confidential information can be stored with high security in SaaS. The developers can manage the applications and on the other hand the enterprise can manage the networking, storage and servers (Wu, Garg & Buyya, 2015). The PaaS platform is highly available, scalable and it allows easy migration to the model. The amounts of coding get minimized with the application of this model and develop and deploy complexity gets simpler while storing information.  

Data Protection

Between SaaS and PaaS, the SaaS cloud computing model can increase the benefits of IT related businesses up to 100 percent than the general. In order to update system mostly the companies denies investing much capital every time. Among the Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the company is required to use the Amazon Web Service SaaS based platform. SaaS offers monthly rental charges instead of one time buying investment. There are different situations where SaaS application stands very helpful (Sharma & Sood, 2014). Though, Land Titles Agency is not a startup company or small company which requires launching Ecommerce quickly but with SaaS platform it will be able to save time for accomplishing the application. Both mobile and web access are required for fulfilling the applications. SaaS provides three different data protection and privacy related opportunities such as:

Data backup: This platform gives the owners an opportunity of keep data as a backup. If any information is found to be destroyed or lost from the server then with the help of data backup the information can be re retrieved again from the server (Lakra & Yadav, 2015). The SaaS operators can duplicate the information and those data can be retrieved by the users whenever required. It also makes sure that all the data are secured from the external attackers and no critical data are lost from the server.

Application resilience: Application resilience is a ability offers to the users to protect the entire business process from external problems. This approach has become very much important to the organizations where continuously multi tier software is implementing. Not only this but also the hidden system vulnerabilities that are affecting the application resiliency are also resolved with the help of SaaS platform.

Disaster recovery: SaaS disaster recovery is a restore or backup planning strategy which includes maintenance and storing of data those are in electronic forms. The aim of the cloud computing technology is to measures all security components so that the lost data either during the platform migration or something else can be recovered easily (Balbudhe et al., 2015). Moreover, the aim of this approach is to provide Land Titles Agency an electronic data recovery opportunity. In other words, SaaS provides charge for the storage on pay per use models depending upon capacity seta and bandwidth as well.

Name of the risks	Mitigation strategies
Cost risks: Land Titles Agency may fail to estimate the actual cost that is needed to accomplish the   Migration to SaaS cloud based platform. Mainly due to poor accuracy in cost estimation and scope creep cost level risk may occur.	In order to avoid the cost risks, the finance manager of Land Titles Agency is required to develop proper feasibility measurements and resources as well. It will help the business owners to gain measurable commercial revenue and competitive advantages as well.
Scheduling risk: Scheduling risk is referred to as that activity which occurs due to improper time management. Inaccurate time management may lead to overrunning cost and over allocation budget. Schedule risks will also affect the competitive advantage of Land Titles Agency.	In order to avoid scheduling risk the head executives of Land Titles Agency are required to measure the complexity of each of the activities taken for the new project. Based on the complexity the time should be allotted for the activities. With accurate measurement only the issues of scheduling risks can be completely resolved.
Performance risks: If the project manager and the organizations head fail to assign professional experts to the activities then the project may not meet the objectives and goals. It is the role of the HR executives to assign accurate resources to specific activities.	In order to accomplish the project needs of Land Titles Agency the HR should hire professional experts. Only professional experts will be able to meet the project objectives of clod based data server. Apart from this, the owners are also required to arrange technical training and development program so that they can develop their technical skills and knowledge simultaneously.
Governance threat: If ethical standards and community stewardship is not properly followed then governing risks may occur in Land Titles Agency.	Before developing the business goals and objectives it is mandatory for the project heads to develop business strategies considering norms and business regulations. The business governance level threats will be completely resolved with the regulatory obligations.
Operational threats:  The operational risks include poor strategy implementation, production, and distribution and procurement problems.	Land Titles Agency should appoint operation manager who will operate the operational activities accurately
Legal risks: this issue may rise from regulatory obligations, contract risks and litigation that are brought against the organization.	Proper legal actions and other approaches should be introduced by the project manager and other project heads before the implementation of the project. It is the role of the research and development team to conduct legal regulations before successful implementation of the projects.

Besides operational, legal, regulatory, cost and performance level risk another major risk that impacts the data management system of Land Titles Agency is security risks. The company deals with maintenance of centralized registry for the newly titled lands. As the numbers of such plots are increasing day by day therefore, managing those data are becoming a challenge to the company. Not only this but also the lawyers and conveyance’s details are also stored in the company store. The recommendations given to Land Titles Agency are as follows:

Suitability of PaaS and SaaS Database for Storage of PII Data

Encryption technology and application firewall are the two different approaches that helps to improve the business efficiency with high security.

Encryption technology: Data encryption is referred to as one of the most appreciable data protection approach. The encrypted data cannot be decrypted by any external user who does not have the key. Both symmetric and asymmetric keys are used to encrypt the information. Even during transaction of data within the channel no data can be retrieved by the users. In addition to this, no unauthenticated and unauthorized users will be able to hijack information from the cloud server without permission.

Firewall: Application firewall and DMZ will also give high security to the confidential information stored in the server.

References

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