Cloud Computing Data Security: Data Encryption Solutions Report

This report addresses the critical issue of data security in cloud computing, highlighting the vulnerabilities arising from the shift to virtual environments and the increasing risk of data breaches. It proposes data encryption as a key solution, differentiating between 'In Flight Encryption' and 'At Rest Data Encryption,' with a focus on the latter's robust protection for stored data. The report emphasizes the importance of data ciphering during transfer to prevent data loss and unauthorized access. Concluding with a request for authorization to proceed with the implementation of data encryption strategies, this report provides a summarized argument for enhancing cloud data security.

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Cloud Computing

Table of Contents
Problem Background – Data Security.............................................................................................3
Proposed Solution – Data Encryption..............................................................................................4
Authorization...................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6
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MEMORANDUM
TO:
CC:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
A computing cloud is a dense cluster of computers working together in such a way that to a
normal observer, they appear to be one giant computer resource, so the content that appears to be
running on one singular laptop or desktop, mobile phone or any other computing device. (Li, et
al., 2018) It is running over the internet on an array of computers that are sharing resources with
each other, storing vast amount of data and other meta-data. With the advancement in technology
and rise in virtual environment work systems, cloud technology became an inseparable part
offering data scalability advantage with reduced cost of maintenance and storage (Ali, Khan, &
Vasilakos, 2015).
Problem Background – Data Security
As the expansion in technology took over standard and obsolete data storage and data access
mechanism, various newer issues ranging from data safety to data theft started emerging.
Multiple threats ranging from various severity like virus attack, denial of service attacks and
hacking of the client’s site are the biggest cloud computing data security issues. Data residency is
one of the biggest concerns of cloud users as they have no control over the location and access of
their valuable data once it is in the cloud (Rao & Selvamani, 2015).
A cyber-criminal looks for weaknesses in the cloud's security in any way possible. An attack
occurs when the systems and its components are being used by identifying its weaknesses to
infiltrate the network. Once an attack player gets access inside a system files, the network and
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tunnel can then be exploited to dig their way to confidential data and before it is realized the
electronically shared data is taken away.
Data breaches have made the headlines quite a lot in the past decade exposing millions of people
to potential identity theft with personal information like credit card information, email address,
residential address, cell phone numbers. With big names like Google & Facebook making the
prime-time news over data security concerns and breaches, the feeling of uncertainty with cloud
as effective data storage mechanism has turned into fear (Tchernykh, Schwiegelsohn, Talbi, &
Babenko, 2016). With breaches ranging from Business and Medical to Banking and Military,
cloud security has become a serious concern among the service providers.
Proposed Solution – Data Encryption
Data encryption is the key to cloud data breach problems and cyber security attacks. Encryption
can be achieved in two ways, namely ‘In Flight Encryption’ and ‘At Rest Data Encryption’. Data
“at rest” is not moving and is generally stored on local disks, storage area network, or network
attached storage, or any other storage medium. The mechanism of encryption at rest is
considered more powerful as compared to in-flight when it comes to Cloud Data Storage (Chang
& Ramachandran, 2016). Data encryption at rest can generally be implemented in one of two
ways of Entire Disk Encryption or File Level Encryption.
With In-Flight mode of encryption, the technology of ciphering is performed during the transfer
and not at stations where it rests. In-flight is referred to as when the data is on move and is more
prone to threats and risks. While transferring data from one station to another, the digital
information is moves in sequential and defined plan of transport. During this transport journey,
the data hops from devices to devises often moving across both secure and unsecure ports where
vulnerability across the data path is comparatively very high. When data is encrypted in-flight,
the data stream is encrypted at one point and then decrypted at the channel’s destination. This
encryption and decryption, also called as Data Ciphering, prevents data loss and changes the data
sequence or data order and makes it unrecognizable without the actual decryption key (Yan, Li,
Wang, & Vasilakos, 2017). It is one of the most widely and extensively used functionality for
data loss and theft prevention.
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Authorization
With the above research and analysis of cloud computing with issues and solutions, the above
report represents the information with summarized arguments for data encryption and decryption
using technology over Cloud Storage. Based on the given arguments, the authorization to
proceed with it further is being requested.
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References
Ali, M., Khan, S. U., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2015). Security in cloud computing: Opportunities and
challenges. Information sciences, 357-383.
Chang, V., & Ramachandran, M. (2016). Towards achieving data security with the cloud
computing adoption framework. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 138-151.
Li, P., Li, J., Huang, Z., Gao, C. Z., Chen, W. B., & Chen, K. (2018). Privacy-preserving
outsourced classification in cloud computing. Cluster Computing, 277-286.
Rao, R. V., & Selvamani, K. (2015). Data security challenges and its solutions in cloud
computing. Procedia Computer Science, 204-209.
Tchernykh, A., Schwiegelsohn, U., Talbi, E. G., & Babenko, M. (2016). Towards understanding
uncertainty in cloud computing with risks of confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Journal of Computational Science.
Yan, Z., Li, X., Wang, M., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2017). Flexible data access control based on trust
and reputation in cloud computing. IEEE transactions on cloud Computing, 485-498.
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