Cloud Computing and Preventive Measures

Introduction

In cloud computing, sharing of resources can be done with help of internet. The resources are inclusive of following things like storage, application, software and lastly network (Sharif et al., 2015). Various cloud users around the world can easily lease various resources of cloud computing as per their need. Despite the benefits of cloud computing, there are many kinds of security issues which are encountered in it. The security issues in cloud computing act as a barrier for its adaptation in IT industry. Cloud computing provides a wonderful platform for the organization for performing a variety of task like online storage, implementation of business, the creation of network environment for the organization (Ali, Khan & Vasilakos, 2015). There is a large number of benefits which can be obtained by the use of cloud computing like reduction of cost, the complexity of buying and operating different systems and networks. Some of the other kinds of benefits to users are scalability, efficiency and lastly reliability. Another kind of benefit which can be obtained is that personal information is protected in the cloud.

In the coming pages of the report, an overview of security threats in cloud computing has been provided. After that preventive measures for various security threats in cloud computing has been discussed. An overview of Cloud computing and its benefits has been provided. Various technologies of cloud computing and their application in real life has been discussed. Various kinds of issues and challenges in cloud computing has been discussed. After that various kind of gaps in Cloud computing have been identified. In the end, an overview has been provided regarding the future research in the domain of cloud computing.

Overview of technology involved

Cloud computing mainly involves delivering various kinds of computer resources like server, application, and storage as services (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016). This services can be easily used to users with the help of cloud computing. Cloud computing service providers mainly provide an offer to a large number of users. Cloud computing mainly consist of three layers of system layer, platform layer and lastly application layer.

The bottom layer is nothing but the system layer which is inclusive of various resources like the infrastructure of servers, storage and lastly memory. It is also known as infrastructure as a service      (Rajeyyagari & Alotaibi, 2018). With the help of virtualization technology, IaaS provides a various virtual machine which ultimately allows users to build complex kind of network infrastructure.

The middle layer is known as Platform as a service (PaaS). It is generally designed in such a way that it can provide a proper platform for the design of the application            (Chang, Kuo & Ramachandran, 2016). Service provided by cloud model generally provides certain tools and application which can be used for having proper control over the deployment of application and configuration settings.

Lastly, the top layer is known as Software as a service (SaaS). This particular layer allows various kinds of the user to rent various kinds of application which runs on cloud eliminating the need for purchase of any kind of application (Chang & Ramachandran, 2016). Due to the reduction of cost of SaaS model, this is considered to be popular among various organization around the globe.

There are mainly three kinds of threats in cloud computing like data threats which are inclusive of data breaches and data loss, network security which is inclusive of hijacking and lastly denial of services (Kazim & Zhu, 2015). The third issue is threats related to interface in cloud computing.

Data threats: Data is considered to be one of the important resources for any organization. The life cycle of data is inclusive of following stages like the creation of data, transit, storage and lastly destruction (Chase et al., 2017). Data can be easily created in client or server in the cloud or transfer to cloud with the help of the network. The biggest issues in cloud computing are the security of keeping the data safe and secure. The security issues of data should be maintained in the cloud with the help of confidentiality, integrity, availability and lastly authorization. Many issues of data are faced due to improper handling of data by various kinds of cloud providers. Various major kinds of threats in data security are data breaches, loss of data, unauthorized access and lastly violation of integrity.

Network threats: Network plays a key role which can be used to the fact that how cloud service providers can operate with various users. Some of the well-known threats of cloud computing are server hijacking and denial of service attacks (Shaikh & Sasikumar, 2015). Application programming interface is nothing but a set of protocol and standards which ultimately defines the communication among software application with the help of internet. A malicious insider can be also considered to be a threat to network in cloud domain (Hao & Shihong, 2015). In many cases, it is seen that cloud computing provides various kinds of services by proper sharing of infrastructure, platform and lastly infrastructure.

Relevant technologies and Application

Relevant technologies in cloud computing are Amazon web service, Google app engine and lastly Microsoft office 365.

Amazon Web Service: AWS is nothing but a collection of remote computing services which can easily create a cloud platform. Various customers which get benefited from AWS are Netflix, SmugMug and lastly wetransfer (Rao & Selvamani, 2015). AWS provides reliable, secure and inexpensive infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data. Amazon provides a platform on which data of client can be organized and stored for achieving objectives. AWS provides a well-known database for developers and customer for huge storage of data. Users round the globe can easily run their data on fully managed relation and NoSQL database or can easily create a database in Amazon EBS and EC2. Amazon SQS is known to be distributed the message for queuing of service (Zhang, C., & Green, R. (2015). This service is mainly used for short messaging when they are transferred between computers and application layers which are considered to be highly scalable. It generally provides various kinds of an authentication procedure for secure handling of various kind of data. In this message are generally stored on various kinds of servers for ensuring of availability.

Google app engine: Google App Engine (GAE) in cloud computing is a well-known platform which can be used for managing and developing web application in various google infrastructure (Inukollu, Arsi & Ravuri, 2014). Development and maintaining of this application are considered to be easy and this application can be considered as a traffic and growth in storage is needed. Infrastructure facilities like server and its maintenance are not required for the development in GAE and so it is deployed. GAE mainly consist of large number of phases like runtime environment, Datastore, service. In traditional design there is the usage of a relational database for persistent usage of data, on the contrary, it makes use of different approach name Bigtable. Various kinds of the option provided by GAE for data storage are NoSQL, cloud SQL and lastly cloud storage.

Microsoft office 365: Office 365 is well-known software of Microsoft in the domain of cloud computing. It is mainly designed in such a way that it can easily provide end to end service at low cost IT solution for various small and medium size organization (Akhunzada et al., 2015). Users round the globe can easily make use of various product and service in the cloud for virtual connection and collaboration. This cloud service provider can easily safeguard the data with various kinds of option like disaster recovery, a datacenter with multiple places along with strict kind of privacy policy. There is a large number of solution like online share point, exchange on online, Lync online and lastly office web application.

Challenges and problem associated with Cloud Computing

There is a large number of challenges and problems which are associated with cloud computing like security, costing model and many other.

Security: Security has played an important role in the world of cloud computing. Some of the well-known issues of security in cloud computing are a loss of data, phishing, the botnet can easily provide more serious kinds of threats to data and software in an organization (Somani et al., 2017). Multi-tendency model and pooled computing resources in cloud computing have led to a large number of security challenges. Multi-tenancy model has led to two kinds of security issues like share resources and reputation fate sharing.

Costing Model: Cloud consumers are generally considered to be tradeoff among computation, communication and lastly integration. Migration to cloud services can easily reduce the cost associated with infrastructure. The cost of data integration can be used for various cloud protocol and interface (Terzi, Terzi & Sagiroglu, 2015). This problem is considered to be prominent when the consumer makes use of hybrid cloud development model.

Identification of gap

Various kinds of gaps in cloud computing are privacy, reliability, legal issues, compliance, freedom, long-term viability and lastly gaps in cloud interoperability.

Privacy: Cloud computing makes use of virtual computing technology. Cloud computing makes use of personal data of a user which can be easily scattered in various data centers which are present in the same physical location. Attackers can easily analyze critical task which ultimately depends on the computation task submitted by the user.

Reliability: Cloud servers also experience downtimes and slowing of various local servers.

Legal Issues: Worries are encountered with a measure of safety and confidentiality of an individual.

Freedom: Cloud computing does not allow the user to physically possess the storage of data, providing data (Chen et al., 2016). In cloud computing, the whole portion of data storage and control is left on the hand of cloud providers.

Security: Some of the well-known gaps in cloud computing are a loss of data, botnet and phishing can easily create security threats to data and software of an organization. Multi-tenancy model and computing resource on the domain of cloud computing have ultimately created new kinds of security challenges like shared resources (hard disk, VM). Another kind of gap which has been identified is the reputation of fate-sharing which ultimately damages the reputation of the good cloud.

The increasing demand for various kinds of computation resources has led to much higher use and demand of cloud computing. Various researchers around the globe make use of technical problems in the concept of cloud computing with the need of addressing the strength of cloud systems (Sajid, Abbas & Saleem, 2016). Creation of cloud computing generally involves various kinds of things like additional costs, improvisation of local infrastructure. Cloud system allows SMEs for selling of services much easily and quickly. In the near future, cloud computing will become a true service provider. Employees of the various organization making use of cloud computing can easily access data from their location and even from distant or abroad location. In the coming future cloud computing is considered as a major kind of facility for various industries and will ultimately become a model for business. Virtualization is considered to be an important part of cloud computing which hides technological complexity and also provide flexibility by aggregation and translation. Virtualization is mainly inclusive of following characteristics like:

• It facilities its use by hiding various kinds of infrastructure like management of
• Flexibility and adaptability by properly displaying of proper kind of fundamental implementation.

Various organization has to save a great amount of money from its IT budget. It can be done by cutting down on acquisition of various equipment or software license. Adaptation of cloud computing services mainly focuses on its outsourcing. It means that it can easily maximize the various kinds of IT resources (Sajid, Abbas & Saleem, 2016). The level of cloud computing can be easily improved by rising productivity of employers which can be achieved by rising of employer’s productivity. It can be easily achieved by maximization of various IT resources and various kinds of supporting employers in IT services.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be easily stated that this report is all about security threats cloud computing and its preventive measures. An overview of the cloud computing and its preventive measures has been provided. Various kinds of technologies to cloud computing and its technologies have been discussed in brief in the above pages of the report. Various challenges and problems in cloud computing have been discussed in detail in above pages of the report. Different gaps in cloud computing have been discussed in brief in the above pages of the report. An overview has been provided regarding the future research in cloud computing. Different organization around the globe are making use of cloud computing for expanding their business. For protection against the issues of cloud, computing organization should apply depth defense mechanism for it. In the overview, three different layers of cloud technology namely bottom layer, middle layer and upper layer has been provided in the above pages of the report. Various kinds of threats in cloud computing like data threats, loss of data, network security and denial of services has been discussed in brief in the above pages of the report. Various kinds of relevant technologies in cloud computing like Amazon web services, Google app engine and lastly Microsoft office 365 has been discussed in details. Different kinds of challenges and problems in cloud computing like security and costing model has been discussed in details in the report. Various kinds of a gap like privacy, reliability, legal issues, freedom and security has been discussed in the above pages. An analysis has been done on the future research of cloud computing.

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