CLOUD COMPUTING AND SECURITY

Cloud Computing and Security

Cloud Computing and Security

Introduction

This paper intends to discuss cloud computing and security. For the people who are aware of technological advancements and information technology frameworks; cloud computing and its underlying security have become important features to discuss. Cloud computing basically refers to different computing concepts which revolve around a significant number of computers being connected with a real time communication network. The real time communication network that is mostly used for cloud computing is internet. This paper is divided into four different tasks. Task one remains important to describe and discuss the threats to cloud security. Task two revolves around discussing the insider threats in the cloud. Similarly; task three identifies and discusses present, past and future attacks related to cloud computing and security. Lastly; task four will discuss the threats to cloud security while identifying a social network to locate and discuss security vulnerabilities. Several references to the cloud computing done with the facilitation of IBM will be provided in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to make the readers aware about the significance of the concept of cloud computing and security.

TASK ONE

Basic Threats to Cloud Security

The security of cloud computing is an extremely important aspect to focus while discussing the essence of cloud computing. The cloud computing security is usually called as cloud security. The concept of cloud security has been evolved due to the underlying threats. The concept of cloud security revolves around an entire set of policies, technologies for the purpose of protecting data and applications which are essentially associated with the framework of cloud computing. The basic threats which are identified to the cloud security are abuse or nefarious use, insecure application programming interfaces, malicious insiders, shared technology vulnerabilities and data loss or leakage. A brief description about all the basic threats to the cloud security is given below;

Abuse or nefarious use

Abuse or nefarious use of cloud computing refers to a situation in which spammers or hackers or other significant criminals can take advantage of the convenient registration related to cloud computing. The underlying simple procedures and capability to access cloud computing services anonymously makes it easy for spammers and hackers to attack the cloud computing services. The most prominent examples of abuse or nefarious use of cloud computing includes password and key cracking, launching dynamic attack points, building rainbow tables, malicious data hosting and many others. The basic targets of the attacks under abuse or nefarious use are either infrastructure of platform as a basic service.

Insecure Application Programming Interfaces (API's)

The second most prominent threat to the cloud computing is the management of customers and interaction of the customers with the cloud services which is conducted with the help of interfaces of APIs. It remains a basic responsibility of the providers to enhance the security which is integrated to the type of service they intend to provide with their service models. In this regard; it also remains important for the users to remain aware ...