Security Threats Affecting Cloud Computing: A Comprehensive Report

This report addresses the escalating security threats in cloud computing, a critical concern with the rapid adoption of cloud services by businesses. It examines various threats, including data breaches, cloud abuse, insecure APIs, malware, shared technology vulnerabilities, and data loss, and proposes preventive measures such as selecting trusted cloud partners, implementing encryption, and establishing security standards. The report identifies gaps in existing literature, highlighting the need for tailored security solutions for different cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). It emphasizes the importance of custom security solutions for specific use cases and the need for robust data security measures, especially for sensitive data. The report concludes by suggesting future research directions, focusing on redefining data security to protect all features and functionalities of cloud services and ensuring secure data storage and isolation of virtual machine environments. The report is based on analysis of existing literature from reputable sources.

Running head: THREATS AFFECTING CLOUD COMPUTING
Threats Affecting Cloud Computing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1THREATS AFFECTING CLOUD COMPUTING
1. Relevant Technologies and Applications of Preventive Methods
With the rapid growth and adoption of cloud computing, newer and newer application
services are being developed on a daily basis. This comes as a significant benefit for the large
businesses and enterprises that wish to meet their goals in a very quick and efficient manner
while also having to worry less about the resources required to do so. However, closely
associated with this are rising security threats to cloud computing (Islam, Manivannan &
Zeadally, 2016). To prevent the threats from compromising their cloud based services
organizations must resort to a range of approaches in strengthening the security. These
security threats can be data breaches, cloud abuse, insecure APIs, Threats from Malware,
Shared technology vulnerabilities and even data loss.
As remedies, selection trusted Cloud partner and a comprehensive encryption
mechanism can address data breach (Rao & Selvamani, 2015). To prevent cloud abuse,
authorized and validated registrations as well as network traffic analysis and monitoring of
credit card process can be exercised. To address issues of insecure API, security standards of
the cloud provider should be evaluated. For stopping malware attacks, companies must have
internet usage policies and cyber security awareness programs in place for the staff. Risks to
shared technology can be addressed by conducting audits of unauthorized changes and
scanning of vulnerabilities. Loss of data can be prevented by identifying partners for secure
backup that use SSL encryption.
2. Identification of Gaps in Literature
As means of safeguarding the various security management standards, numerous
security standards have been developed to tighten the security umbrella for cloud based
services. These can include Open Virtualization Format that is OVF, the ISO standards
ISO/IEC 27001/27002 as well as ITIL or Information Technology Infrastructure Library

2THREATS AFFECTING CLOUD COMPUTING
(Almorsy, Grundy & Müller, 2016). However, companies cannot completely depend upon
these as the fit and forget means of addressing all security concerns associated with cloud
computing. The security solutions mentioned above for addressing the various threats in
particular yet these are at best a mix of common solutions which are used for preventing
certain threats. For effectively securing applications by means of cloud computing, there
should be solutions that aim to target security issues affecting the specific use cases of private
and public cloud technologies by business such as custom security solutions for either IaaS -
Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS - Platform as a Service or SaaS - Software as a Service (Ali,
Khan & Vasilakos, 2015). For this the organization must work closely with the cloud partner
to secure the involved assets from the respective threats revolving the services.
3. Future Research based on Literature Gap
To prevent compromising security and rise of compliance issues from transfer of
sensitive business data to cloud based SaaS, the data security must be redefined by the
business to effectively secure all features and functionalities of SaaS service (Hussein &
Khalid, 2016). The same applies for PaaS and IaaS based cloud services as security threats
function by targeting the specific endpoints of a particular system, in this case cloud based
platforms or cloud hosted applications. In IaaS, cloud resources get dynamically allocated
among the users. The cloud service provide must see to it that data stored by users cannot be
accessed by other users unless permitted to (Bayramusta & Nasir, 2016). Likewise, the virtual
machine (VM) environments of each organizational member must be kept isolated from that
of others also.

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References
Ali, M., Khan, S. U., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2015). Security in cloud computing: Opportunities
and challenges. Information sciences, 305, 357-383.
Almorsy, M., Grundy, J., & Müller, I. (2016). An analysis of the cloud computing security
problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.
Bayramusta, M., & Nasir, V. A. (2016). A fad or future of IT?: A comprehensive literature
review on the cloud computing research. International Journal of Information
Management, 36(4), 635-644.
Hussein, N. H., & Khalid, A. (2016). A survey of cloud computing security challenges and
solutions. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, 14(1),
52.
Islam, T., Manivannan, D., & Zeadally, S. (2016). A classification and characterization of
security threats in cloud computing. Int. J. Next-Gener. Comput, 7(1).
Rao, R. V., & Selvamani, K. (2015). Data security challenges and its solutions in cloud
computing. Procedia Computer Science, 48, 204-209.