CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud Computing

[Student Number]

Cloud Computing

Introduction

The paper discusses the argument by picking one angle of cloud computing. It will talk about cloud computing in the security side of cloud computing.

Cloud computing is the most talked about IT service these days. Each and every person talks about this new concept called 'cloud computing.' Cloud computing is overhyped because it is a very old concept. This concept has been introduced in the 1960s; however, it is used in a different way today. Cloud computing refers to the usage of software with the help of a browser.

The emergence of cloud computing provides numerous opportunities for academia, the information technology (IT) industry and the global economy as an information technology revolution. Compared to other distributed computing paradigms such as Grid computing and High Performance Computing (HPC), cloud computing provides broader inter operability over the world-wide web networks. As IT industry leaders such as Google, IBM and Amazon, are striving to promote this advanced computing paradigm, it is reasonable to expect that cloud computing will bring profound changes to every aspect of the IT industry and to various sectors of the economy.

Literature Review

Since cloud computing offers companies the ability to store data in a central, offsite location, does it provide greater security confidence in the ability to control access to that data? Will company executives feel compelled to turn to a cloud service provider in the wake of increased risk of data loss and the rising cost of a data breach? Stolen laptops and removable media are the most common forms of data breaches that are currently reported as can be seen by the data provided from the Open Security Foundation. The Open Security Foundation is a volunteer organization that maintains an online database of data breaches involving personal identifiable information such as names, addresses, and dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and medical and financial data that occur mostly in the United States. The volunteers examine news accounts and web sites to gather data also regularly send Freedom of Information requests to various states to request breach notification documents that the states receive as a result of legislative requirements. The information is posted in a database that is available for education and research and to increase awareness of information security and identity theft threats for consumers, government officials and executives.

Cloud Computing is the result of the evolution of other models already established as virtualization, grid computing, autonomic computing, on demand, SOA and the concept of 'software as a service'. Under this model, the user connects seamlessly to a huge network of computers that, in some cases, are geographically dispersed. Based on data provided by the Open Security Foundation, data loss by stolen laptops or computers did not become an issue until 2003 at the first recorded data breach from a stolen laptop with one incident reported involving 43,000 records. The number of data breach incidents involving lost or stolen laptops soared in 2005 with 22 incidents reported involving 520,996 records. In 2006, 137 incidents of lost/stolen laptops were reported involving 2,810,128 records.

In 2007, the group tracked 120 incidents of lost/stolen laptops that affected 3,760,157 ...