Cloud Security and Privacy

This report discusses cloud security and privacy, including advantages and challenges. Cloud computing is a significant delivery of hosted services that are provided to users on the Internet. Cloud security is a broader set of technologies, controls, and policies that are deployed for the proper protection and security of applications, data, or associated infrastructures of the technology of cloud computing.

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Cloud Security and Privacy
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Cloud Computing Security.....................................................................................................2
Cloud Storage Security..........................................................................................................3
Advantages of Cloud Security and Privacy...........................................................................3
Challenges of Cloud Security and Privacy.............................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Cloud computing can be stated as the shared pools of the configurable resources of
computer system as well as high level services, which could be rapidly provisioned with
extremely less effort of management over the Internet connection (Rong, Nguyen and Jaatun
2013). This technology of cloud computing majorly relies on the resource sharing for the core
purpose of achieving coherence or economies of scales. The third party clouds eventually
enable the organizations for focusing on the major businesses and not on expending the
resources on the computer maintenance and infrastructure. This cloud computing also enables
the organizations for avoiding or minimizing the upfront costs of IT infrastructure (Almorsy,
Grundy and Müller 2016). The applications could be easily run with the help of this
technology and hence security and privacy are important. The following report outlines a
brief description of cloud privacy and security with relevant details.
Discussion
Cloud Computing Security
The cloud computing security is the specified set of several control based policies and
technologies that are eventually designed for adhering to the rules of regulatory compliance
and hence protecting the information, applications of data or infrastructure that is associated
with the utilization of cloud computing (Aljawarneh 2013). Since, the nature of the cloud is
of shared resources, the identity management, access controls and privacy controls are the
concerns faced by its users. Moreover, the organizations that are utilizing cloud computing as
well as the associated providers of cloud for the data operations, privacy and security are kept
on top priorities. These are often termed as extremely vulnerable in respect to other
technologies (Chou 2013). The major processes of cloud computing security is responsible
for addressing each and every security control, which is often incorporated by the cloud

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provider for the significant maintenance of data security, compliance and privacy with the
required regulations. These processes would even involve the data backup planning and
business continuity planning for solving against the cloud security breaches.
Cloud Storage Security
The cloud storage is extremely convenient and hence provides proper access to data to
the users, irrespective of the time and device. The security of cloud storage is considered as
one of the major concerns in the IT department or security department of all organizations
(Zhao, Li and Liu 2014). The advantages that are substantially brought by the cloud storage
are scalability or accessibility and even reduced IT overheads. A rapid adoption is being
driven at the enterprises in the world for undertaking them to improvise the security of cloud
storage and hence sensitive or confidential data is kept safe and secured within the cloud.
Cloud storage security is extremely important and significant for all types of
organizations or enterprises (Mishra et al. 2013). These enterprises eventually utilize the
cloud services since they provide quite flexible as well as cost effective alternatives to the
locally implemented or expensive hardware. The respective business within cloud refers to
the fact that the sensitive data or files are completely exposed to the newer risks since the
cloud stored data substantially resides outside of the limits of the safeguards, utilized for
protecting these data. There is a core responsibility of data security for providers of cloud
storage (Salah et al. 2013). With the cloud storage security, the users could easily enjoy the
overall flexibility and performance of cloud.
Advantages of Cloud Security and Privacy
There are some of the major and the most significant advantages of cloud security and
privacy. These specific advantages are as follows:

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i) Protection of Data: The first and the foremost advantage of the cloud
privacy and security is that it provides utmost protection to the confidential data or
information of its users (Sachdev and Bhansali 2013). Moreover, these data are protected
with in-built firewalls in the cloud.
ii) Prevention of Data Breaching: The next important and significant advantage of
this cloud security and privacy is that it helps in the proper prevention of data breaches.
Hence, the users do not face any type of issues related to data breaching.
iii) Disaster Recovery Planning: Another specific benefit of the cloud security and
privacy is provides disaster recovery planning for the data (Tari 2014). This refers to the fact
that even if there is any type of issue regarding data corruption or data breaching, the users
have the scope of recovering the confidential data easily and promptly.
iv) Cost Effectiveness: The fourth advantage of this type of security to the cloud is
that it is extremely cost effective and hence could be utilized by all. Moreover, the
complexity of this technology security is also much lower in comparison to others.
v) Implements Baseline Protection: Cloud privacy and security even is responsible
for implementing the baseline protection to the platforms or data that are being processed
(Kalaiprasath, Elankavi and Udayakumar 2017). Furthermore, the proper authentication,
access controls or encryption are also implemented for this type of protection of data with
cloud security.
vi) Protection Against Failure of Hardware: The sixth important advantage of the
cloud security and privacy is that it helps in the proper protection against the failure of
hardware. The hardware failure is one of the most common issues faced in IT departments
and hence it could be easily and properly resolved with the help of cloud security and
privacy.

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Challenges of Cloud Security and Privacy
In spite of having all the above mentioned distinct advantages, the cloud security and
privacy comprises of some of the major and noteworthy challenges that are extremely
dangerous for the organizations, utilizing cloud computing in their businesses (Zhao, Li and
Liu 2014). These distinct and popular challenges of the cloud security and privacy are as
follows:
i) Dependency on Vendors: Since, cloud computing is used after the proper
involvement of vendors, the users are completely dependent on the vendors and hence this is
extremely dangerous for the users.
ii) No Control of Data Access: The second noteworthy disadvantage of the cloud
security and privacy is that there is absolutely no control of the data access (Almorsy, Grundy
and Müller 2016). This refers to the fact that the employees could easily take the confidential
data for any kind of data breaching and hence the organizational data would be breached
eventually.
iii) Reduction of Service Quality: Due to the over protection and over security of
cloud, the vendors could easily degrade the quality of their services and this would lead to
some of the most significant problems for the users.
iv) Usability: Another distinct disadvantage of the cloud security is its usability.
When any document is dragged or dropped into the folder of cloud storage, substantially
permanently moves that document from the original folder to the location of cloud storage
(Rong, Nguyen and Jaatun 2013). Hence, the original location of the document is lost.
Conclusion
Therefore, from this above discussion, it can be concluded that cloud computing is the
significant delivery of the hosted services that are provided to the users on the Internet. This

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particular technology substantially enables the organizations in consuming the computing
resources like virtual machines, storages and applications. Hence, building and maintaining
the computing infrastructures is much easier with cloud computing. The technology is
responsible for boasting various important advantages for the businesses like self service
provisioning, elasticity, pay as per user, resilience of workload, flexibility in migration and
many more. Cloud security can be referred to as the broader set of technologies, controls and
policies that are being deployed for the proper protection and security of applications, data or
associated infrastructures of the technology of cloud computing. This is the sub domain of the
computer security, information security and network security. The above report has properly
described the cloud privacy and security.

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References
Aljawarneh, S., 2013. Cloud security engineering: Avoiding security threats the right way.
In Cloud Computing Advancements in Design, Implementation, and Technologies (pp. 147-
153). IGI Global.
Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Müller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security
problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.
Chou, T.S., 2013. Security threats on cloud computing vulnerabilities. International Journal
of Computer Science & Information Technology, 5(3), p.79.
Kalaiprasath, R., Elankavi, R. and Udayakumar, D.R., 2017. Cloud. Security and
Compliance-A Semantic Approach in End to End Security. International Journal Of
Mechanical Engineering And Technology (Ijmet), 8(5).
Mishra, A., Mathur, R., Jain, S. and Rathore, J.S., 2013. Cloud computing
security. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and
Communication, 1(1), pp.36-39.
Rong, C., Nguyen, S.T. and Jaatun, M.G., 2013. Beyond lightning: A survey on security
challenges in cloud computing. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 39(1), pp.47-54.
Sachdev, A. and Bhansali, M., 2013. Enhancing cloud computing security using AES
algorithm. International Journal of Computer Applications, 67(9).
Salah, K., Calero, J.M.A., Zeadally, S., Al-Mulla, S. and Alzaabi, M., 2013. Using cloud
computing to implement a security overlay network. IEEE security & privacy, 11(1), pp.44-
53.
Tari, Z., 2014. Security and Privacy in Cloud Computing. IEEE Cloud Computing, 1(1),
pp.54-57.

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Zhao, F., Li, C. and Liu, C.F., 2014, February. A cloud computing security solution based on
fully homomorphic encryption. In Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), 2014
16th International Conference on (pp. 485-488). IEEE.