Security Threats in Cloud Computing and Preventive Methods

Running head: SECURITY THREATS IN CLOUD COMPUTING AND PREVENTIVE METHODS
SECURITY THREATS IN CLOUD COMPUTING AND PREVENTIVE METHODS
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1SECURITY THREATS IN CLOUD COMPUTING AND PREVENTIVE METHODS
Abstract:
The Internet has changed the way of living and has also paved the way for modern industrial
operations. One of such internet-application is cloud computing in which the computing
services are offered over the internet (Musa & Sani, 2016). Through the cloud computing,
the users can access applications and services remotely without buying costly equipment.
However, with so much of benefits, there is another side of the subject which offers
significant threats to the users. In the discussed paper, the author has attempted at evaluating
the security threats of the cloud computing and offer some preventive measures to minimise
or nullify the identified threats.
Security is the primary concern of the cloud users, and one of the significant
challenges in cloud services is to prevent a data breach. In the deemed scenario, the
confidential, personal or protected data is leaked out (stolen) and seen by someone who does
not have proper authorisation for using it (Ashktorab & Taghizadeh, 2012). This breach could
prove to be crucial because the leaked data may consist of business strategies, public health,
some confidential government data and others. The discussed security scenario can be
countered by adopting suitable security measures through different cloud security programs
and models. Two of the most successful measure is to keep the data encrypted and
multifactor authentication. The first security measure encodes the information so that only
authenticated users can read it while the latter includes multiple authentication methods.
Password, OTP, security token, biometric means and others can be used in combinations to
enable authentication making it almost impossible for anyone to hack into the data.
APIs (application programming interfaces) and UIs (user interface) are the set of
software that the user uses to interact and manage the cloud services. The stronger the APIs
security is, the stronger the security of the cloud services is (Musa & Sani, 2016). The
discussed systems should be designed to tackle any catastrophic situations be it malicious or