Security Issues in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. The concept enables a range of opportunities. In order to capitalize on these opportunities, different issues of cloud computing must be taken into account. Security is one of the most important issues to be addressed prior to committing to a cloud computing strategy. As a customer uses third party infrastructures, privacy and integrity issues arise. In the same way, the new technologies and services used on the cloud must be fully evaluated with respect to security. This article provides a brief introduction to the major issues and concerns related to cloud computing security.

Trust

Maintaining trust between the cloud service provider and the customer is one of the main issues cloud computing faces today. There should be some means to ensure the customer that services are properly managed and all security measures have been taken into account. The current service level agreement (SLA) between customer and provider doesn’t have a well defined format. So, there may be services not documented in the SLA that the customer may be unaware that it will need these services at some later time.

Integrity and Privacy

The data available on a cloud can be accessed from any location by any user. The cloud does not differentiate between sensitive data from common data. This enables anyone to access and modify those sensitive data’s. So, there is also lack of data integrity in cloud computing. In addition, the cloud service provider must ensure the privacy of data. As most of the servers are external, the vendor should make sure who is accessing the data and who is maintaining the server; thus enabling the vendor to protect the customer’s personal information.

Data Loss

Data loss i.e. the probability of seeing one’s valuable data disappears into the ether without a trace, is a very serious problem in cloud computing. This can happened due to hacking or natural disasters (fire, flood, earth quake etc.). Similarly, if the vendor closes due to financial or legal problems, there will be a loss of data for the customers. Compounding the challenge, encrypting the data to ward off theft can backfire if you one loses its encryption key.

Malicious entities

The malicious entities can be a disgruntled employee, a contractor, or a business partner who gains access to a network, system, or data for malicious purposes. In addition, the cloud service provider should have complete access to the server for monitoring and maintenance, thus preventing any malicious user from uploading any infected application onto the cloud which will severely affect the customer. Finally, a cloud can suffer from cloud abuse, for instance, to break an encryption key that is too difficult to crack on a standard computer.

Legal Issues

There are several regulatory requirements, privacy laws and data security laws that cloud systems need to adhere to. One of the major problems with adhering to the laws is that laws vary from country to country, and users have no control over where their data is physically located.

Conclusion

Cloud Computing offers some incredible benefits: unlimited storage, access to lightening quick processing power and the ability to easily share and process information. However, it does have several issues, and most of them are security related. This article has discussed there may be other security issues as well. Research is currently being done on the different known issues faced by cloud systems and possible solutions for these issues, however there is still a need for better solutions if cloud systems are to be widely adopted.