Cloud Security and SDLC Models

This assignment tasks students with comparing different Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) models – Waterfall, V-Model, and Agile – in the context of cloud computing security. Students are expected to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each model in addressing data security and privacy concerns within a cloud environment. The paper also delves into the challenges of implementing secure cloud storage and highlights the importance of non-functional requirements like security in software development.

Running head: HEADSPACE CASE STUDY
Headspace Case Study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
1. The Non-Functional Requirements of the System...................................................................3
1.1 Functionality......................................................................................................................3
1.2 Usability.............................................................................................................................3
1.3 Reliability..........................................................................................................................4
1.4 Performances.....................................................................................................................4
1.5 Security..............................................................................................................................4
2. The Functional Requirements of the System vs The Non-Functional Requirements.............4
3. Cloud Based Solution..............................................................................................................5
3.1 Cloud Environment Strength.............................................................................................5
3.2 Cloud Environment Weakness..........................................................................................6
4. SDLC Approach......................................................................................................................6
4.1 Predictive Approach..........................................................................................................7
4.2 Adaptive Approach............................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Headspace is a popular organization, which works with youth generation aged twelve to
twenty-five, who experience mental illness and ill health. Anxiety and depression are the most
common mental health problems, although there are many other mental illnesses as well. Every
time these patients need to tell their problems again (Pearce & Bainbridge, 2014). The young
people discussed little and even stopped talking about their problem. This makes it harder for the
professionals to help them for their problems. Initially, a social worker of Headspace, then the
medical staff in a hospital, maybe a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and a general practitioner sees
them. Currently, funds are raised to form a system that will record the patient’s story in the first
time. This will provide authority to the specific professionals, so that the case studies and their
story can improve, and the young patient can be facilitated appropriately and more precisely
(Steele, Min & Lo, 2012). This particular organization has considered opting for a cloud based
solution for their project. This report focuses on the cloud that should be undertaken by
Headspace for their business.
The following report outlines a brief description on the need for the implementation of
cloud in Headspace organization. The report covers the non functional requirements of the
system and the type of cloud Headspace should opt for their business (Chen & Zhao, 2012). The
report further mentions about the recommended software development life cycle approach,
which would be the best for the organization.

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HEADSPACE CASE STUDY
Discussion
1. The Non-Functional Requirements of the System
The non functional requirements of a particular system deals with the attributes of a
system for performing the functions optimally (Chung et al., 2012). The main advantage of these
requirements is that they help in identifying the critical qualities of the systems, the requirements
of the system and the constraints of the system. These features are taken into consideration for
the implementation of any project. These non functional requirements has an important impact
on the success factors of the project (Balaji & Murugaiyan, 2012). The various non functional
requirements for the Headspace case study with respect to FURPS or functionality, usability,
reliability, performance and security are given below.
1.1 Functionality
This is the most important criteria for this particular project of My Health Record system.
The information system would be having all the necessary information related to the patients
(Chen & Zhao, 2012). Hence, it is extremely important for the system to enable a particular
option for updating and accessing the information according to the needs of the user. The main
functional requirement of this particular system is the adaptability.
1.2 Usability
This is the second most important criteria for the non functional requirements of this
project. The software can be easily learnt and this is the main requirement under usability
(Galibus & Vissia, 2015). The interface between the software and the user should b user friendly
so that it can be easily accessed by all users.

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1.3 Reliability
This is the most important requirement under the non-functional requirements. The
system should be reliable enough as it would be storing all the confidential data or information
regarding the patients (Jain & Nandakumar, 2012). Moreover, the system would be automatically
updating the information. Therefore, the reliability of the system is essential. Moreover, for
cloud based environment requires utmost reliability.
1.4 Performances
Performance is the fourth important criteria for the non functional requirements in any
project (Li et al., 2015). If the performance of any system will not be up to the mark, it is useless
to implement that particular system. The system should provide perfect performances and should
be flexible in nature.
1.5 Security
The information that would be stored in the My Health Record system will be extremely
confidential and sensitive in nature. The security of that information is necessary (Galibus &
Vissia, 2015). Unauthorized access should be strictly prohibited at any cost. Biometric
authentication should be present in the system so that only authenticated users can access the
data or information.
2. The Functional Requirements of the System vs The Non-Functional Requirements
The functional requirements of a system evaluate the probable or estimated functions of a
system. In other words, these are referred to those particular functions that are expected to come
out from the system (Chung et al., 2012). This is different from the non functional requirements,
which deals with the qualities of a system. It deals with those qualities that are evident to be

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present in the system. This is the basic difference between the functional requirements and the
non functional requirements of a system.
3. Cloud Based Solution
Headspace has decided for opting cloud based solution for their business (Galibus &
Vissia, 2015). There are four types of clouds available in the market. They are the private cloud,
public cloud, hybrid cloud and the community cloud. Public cloud is open to all. Private cloud is
a closed cloud and only a group of clients can access it. Hybrid cloud is the mixture of both
private cloud and public cloud (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016). Community cloud is a fixed
group of users that has users with same requirements.
The suggested cloud for this particular case study is the Hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud is the
mixture of both private cloud and public cloud (Jain & Nandakumar, 2012). This eventually
means hybrid cloud has several features of private cloud as well as several features of public
cloud. Choosing a public cloud would not be good idea as it always has the chance of attacks.
Private cloud on the other hand, does not allow any unregistered users to access it. This becomes
problem many a times. Hybrid cloud is the solution for this particular problem. Almost
everybody can access a hybrid cloud, however wit utmost security (Li et al., 2015). Whenever,
hybrid cloud detects any intrusion, it immediately blocks the entire cloud system. Therefore,
hybrid cloud would be the best solution for the Headspace organization.
3.1 Cloud Environment Strength
The hybrid cloud has several strengths or advantages that make it popular and accepted
by all organizations (Chen & Zhao, 2012). The advantages of hybrid cloud are as follows:

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i) Security: This is the first and the foremost feature for a hybrid cloud (Li et al., 2014).
As it has the features of a private cloud, it is absolutely and extremely secured and data
breaching or intrusion is almost impossible in this cloud.
ii) Cost Effective: This is the second most important feature for a hybrid cloud (Kulkarni
et al., 2012). In spite of the combination of both private and public clouds, hybrid cloud is
extremely cost effective in nature and can be easily afforded by all organizations.
3.2 Cloud Environment Weakness
In spite of having several strengths, hybrid cloud do have some of the major weaknesses
or disadvantages (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016). The weaknesses of hybrid cloud are as
follows:
i) Implementation Cost: The implementation cost of a hybrid cloud is much more than in
a private or public cost (Li et al., 2012). However, once implemented, the maintenance cost is
lower than others.
ii) Movement of Data: The data is constantly moved from the private and the public
clouds (AlZain et al., 2012). The hacker can get the access of the data during this movement and
can breach the data easily.
Therefore, it can be concluded that hybrid cloud would be the best solution for
Headspace organization.
4. SDLC Approach
The Software Development Life Cycle or the SDLC is the sequence of steps that is
followed during the creation of a project. This life cycle has various phases and completion of

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each phase leads to the next phase (Balaji & Murugaiyan, 2012). The phases of a software
development life cycle include requirement gathering and analysis, design, implementation of
coding, testing, deployment and maintenance. There are two types of approaches in a software
development life cycle. They are the predictive approach and the adaptive approach.
4.1 Predictive Approach
The predictive approach of a software development life cycle means the complete life
cycle of the project during the initiation of the project (Tuteja & Dubey, 2012). This is possible
when the project scope and schedule are clear. The pros and cons of predictive SDLC are as
follows:
Pros:
i) The scope of the project is absolutely clear and so is the schedule.
ii) The planning of the project is done perfectly (Mahalakshmi & Sundararajan, 2013).
iii) The requirements are clear to everyone, involved in the project.
iv) The progress is tracked thoroughly until the completion.
Cons:
i) Improvisation is almost impossible as everything is done in the beginning.
ii) The feedback cannot be taken as everything is pre planned.
4.2 Adaptive Approach
The adaptive approach is slight different from the predictive approach. The entire project
plan is not made at the beginning. At each phase, deliverables are sent and acknowledged

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(Mahalakshmi & Sundararajan, 2013). There are various pros or advantages and cons or
disadvantages of this particular approach. They are as follows:
Pros:
i) Project can be improvised at every stage.
ii) Feedback increments the perfectness of the system.
Cons:
i) Cost is extremely high in this type of approach.
ii) Schedule time and scope of the project is not clear (Tuteja & Dubey, 2012).
It is recommended for Headspace to choose the Predictive approach of SDLC as it would
be extremely beneficial for the organization.
Conclusion
Therefore from the above discussion, it can be concluded that Headspace is a popular
organization, which works with youth generation aged twelve to twenty-five, who experience
mental illness and ill health. Anxiety and depression are the most common mental health
problems, although there are many other mental illnesses as well. Youth suicide in indigenous
New South Wales for the age group of sixteen to twenty four has been particularly disturbing and
alarming, especially amongst the local and indigenous youth. One of the major problems
recognized was that a young person of age group of sixteen to twenty five with a mental illness
and problem needs special attention from multiple professionals. Every time these patients need
to tell their problems again. The young people discussed little and even stopped talking about

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HEADSPACE CASE STUDY
their problem. This makes it harder for the professionals to help them for their problems.
Initially, a social worker of Headspace, then the medical staff in a hospital, maybe a
psychologist, a psychiatrist, and a general practitioner sees them. Currently, funds are raised to
form a system that will record the patient’s story in the first time. This will provide authority to
the specific professionals, so that the case studies and their story can improve, and the young
patient can be facilitated appropriately and more precisely. This particular organization has
considered opting for a cloud based solution for their project. This report focuses on the cloud
that should be undertaken by Headspace for their business. The above report outlines a brief
description about the case study of Headspace that has decided for cloud based solution for their
business. The report helps to understand the non functional requirements of the system and the
security of the confidential data. Relevant recommendations are also provided for the choice of
software development life cycle approach.

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HEADSPACE CASE STUDY
References
AlZain, M. A., Pardede, E., Soh, B., & Thom, J. A. (2012, January). Cloud computing security:
from single to multi-clouds. In System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International
Conference on (pp. 5490-5499). IEEE.
Balaji, S., & Murugaiyan, M. S. (2012). Waterfall vs. V-Model vs. Agile: A comparative study
on SDLC. International Journal of Information Technology and Business Management,
2(1), 26-30.
Chen, D., & Zhao, H. (2012, March). Data security and privacy protection issues in cloud
computing. In Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (ICCSEE), 2012
International Conference on (Vol. 1, pp. 647-651). IEEE.
Chung, L., Nixon, B. A., Yu, E., & Mylopoulos, J. (2012). Non-functional requirements in
software engineering (Vol. 5). Springer Science & Business Media.
Galibus, T., & Vissia, H. E. R. M. (2015). Cloud storage security. Proc NSCE, 2014, 123-127.
Jain, A. K., & Nandakumar, K. (2012). Biometric Authentication: System Security and User
Privacy. IEEE Computer, 45(11), 87-92.
Kulkarni, G., Gambhir, J., Patil, T., & Dongare, A. (2012, June). A security aspects in cloud
computing. In Software Engineering and Service Science (ICSESS), 2012 IEEE 3rd
International Conference on (pp. 547-550). IEEE.

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Li, J., Li, Y. K., Chen, X., Lee, P. P., & Lou, W. (2015). A hybrid cloud approach for secure
authorized deduplication. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 26(5),
1206-1216.
Li, Q., Wang, Z. Y., Li, W. H., Li, J., Wang, C., & Du, R. Y. (2013). Applications integration in
a hybrid cloud computing environment: Modelling and platform. Enterprise Information
Systems, 7(3), 237-271.
Mahalakshmi, M., & Sundararajan, M. (2013). Traditional SDLC Vs Scrum Methodology–A
Comparative Study. International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced
Engineering, 3(6), 192-196.
Pearce, C., & Bainbridge, M. (2014). A personally controlled electronic health record for
Australia. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 21(4), 707-713.
Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2016). Cloud computing: implementation, management,
and security. CRC press.
Steele, R., Min, K., & Lo, A. (2012). Personal health record architectures: technology
infrastructure implications and dependencies. Journal of the Association for Information
Science and Technology, 63(6), 1079-1091.
Tuteja, M., & Dubey, G. (2012). A research study on importance of testing and quality assurance
in software development life cycle (SDLC) models. International Journal of Soft
Computing and Engineering (IJSCE), 2(3), 251-257