Report on Security Threats in Cloud Computing and Preventive Measures

This report provides an overview of security threats in cloud computing and discusses preventive measures to mitigate these threats. It begins by defining cloud computing and highlighting its benefits, followed by an examination of relevant technologies such as Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine, and Microsoft Office 365, along with their applications. The report identifies challenges and problems associated with cloud computing, including security concerns and costing models, and highlights gaps in privacy, reliability, and legal issues. It delves into specific threats like data breaches, data loss, network intrusions, and denial-of-service attacks, offering potential solutions for data security and privacy protection. Finally, the report concludes with a discussion of future research directions in the field of cloud computing, emphasizing the need for ongoing efforts to address evolving security challenges.

Running head: INFORMATION SECURITY
SECURITY THREATS IN CLOUD COMPUTING AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Abstract
Cloud Computing is new a technology which provides a satisfaction to the demands of various
customers. It mainly makes the job much easier for all its users around the globe. In simple
words, cloud computing can be defined as the delivery of computing services over the internet.
In cloud computing security is the most important area to noticed or check. The secure
infrastructure of the cloud should be used for providing services to users. The increased use of
virtualization provides a platform which can be used for raising security concerns among the
cloud users. Virtualization aims at altering relationship operating system and its underlying
hardware. The underlying hardware can be computing, networking or even storage. Various
organization around the globe are adopting cloud for their businesses. So certain measures must
be taken for the security of the business. The growth in cloud computing has provided a lot of
security challenges for the consumers and services which are provided by it.
In the last few years, the number of the user of cloud computing has increased a lot. A lot of data
has been stored in various cloud computing environment. Various kinds of security challenges in
the cloud are the management of identity, protection of data, availability and lastly
confidentiality. This report examines various kinds of security issues of cloud computing like
authentication, misuse of cloud infrastructure, the intrusion of the network, denial of service
attack and lastly session hijacking. This report also provides a solution for security of data and
privacy protection issues in cloud computing. After that, the report describes the future work
related to cloud computing.

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Discussion............................................................................................................................3
Overview of technology involved...................................................................................3
Relevant technologies and Application...........................................................................3
Challenges and problem associated in Cloud Computing...............................................3
Identification of gap.........................................................................................................3
Future Research...............................................................................................................3
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................3
References............................................................................................................................3

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Introduction
In cloud computing, sharing of resources can be done with help of internet. The resources
are inclusive of following things like storage, application, software and lastly network (Sharif et
al., 2015). Various cloud users around the world can easily lease various resources of cloud
computing as per their need. Despite the benefits of cloud computing, there are many kinds of
security issues which are encountered in it. The security issues in cloud computing act as a
barrier for its adaptation in IT industry. Cloud computing provides a wonderful platform for the
organization for performing a variety of task like online storage, implementation of business, the
creation of network environment for the organization (Ali, Khan & Vasilakos, 2015). There is a
large number of benefits which can be obtained by the use of cloud computing like reduction of
cost, the complexity of buying and operating different systems and networks. Some of the other
kinds of benefits to users are scalability, efficiency and lastly reliability. Another kind of benefit
which can be obtained is that personal information is protected in the cloud.
In the coming pages of the report, an overview of security threats in cloud computing has
been provided. After that preventive measures for various security threats in cloud computing
has been discussed. An overview of Cloud computing and its benefits has been provided.
Various technologies of cloud computing and their application in real life has been discussed.
Various kinds of issues and challenges in cloud computing has been discussed. After that various
kind of gaps in Cloud computing have been identified. In the end, an overview has been provided
regarding the future research in the domain of cloud computing.

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Discussion
Overview of technology involved
Cloud computing mainly involves delivering various kinds of computer resources like
server, application, and storage as services (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016). This services can
be easily used to users with the help of cloud computing. Cloud computing service providers
mainly provide an offer to a large number of users. Cloud computing mainly consist of three
layers of system layer, platform layer and lastly application layer.
The bottom layer is nothing but the system layer which is inclusive of various resources
like the infrastructure of servers, storage and lastly memory. It is also known as infrastructure as
a service (Rajeyyagari & Alotaibi, 2018). With the help of virtualization technology, IaaS
provides a various virtual machine which ultimately allows users to build complex kind of
network infrastructure.
The middle layer is known as Platform as a service (PaaS). It is generally designed in
such a way that it can provide a proper platform for the design of the application (Chang, Kuo
& Ramachandran, 2016). Service provided by cloud model generally provides certain tools and
application which can be used for having proper control over the deployment of application and
configuration settings.
Lastly, the top layer is known as Software as a service (SaaS). This particular layer
allows various kinds of the user to rent various kinds of application which runs on cloud
eliminating the need for purchase of any kind of application (Chang & Ramachandran, 2016).
Due to the reduction of cost of SaaS model, this is considered to be popular among various
organization around the globe.

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There are mainly three kinds of threats in cloud computing like data threats which are
inclusive of data breaches and data loss, network security which is inclusive of hijacking and
lastly denial of services (Kazim & Zhu, 2015). The third issue is threats related to interface in
cloud computing.
Fig 1: Cloud Computing
(Source: Chen et al., 2016, pp-740)
Data threats: Data is considered to be one of the important resources for any
organization. The life cycle of data is inclusive of following stages like the creation of data,
transit, storage and lastly destruction (Chase et al., 2017). Data can be easily created in client or
server in the cloud or transfer to cloud with the help of the network. The biggest issues in cloud
computing are the security of keeping the data safe and secure. The security issues of data should
be maintained in the cloud with the help of confidentiality, integrity, availability and lastly

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authorization. Many issues of data are faced due to improper handling of data by various kinds of
cloud providers. Various major kinds of threats in data security are data breaches, loss of data,
unauthorized access and lastly violation of integrity.
Network threats: Network plays a key role which can be used to the fact that how cloud
service providers can operate with various users. Some of the well-known threats of cloud
computing are server hijacking and denial of service attacks (Shaikh & Sasikumar, 2015).
Application programming interface is nothing but a set of protocol and standards which
ultimately defines the communication among software application with the help of internet. A
malicious insider can be also considered to be a threat to network in cloud domain (Hao &
Shihong, 2015). In many cases, it is seen that cloud computing provides various kinds of services
by proper sharing of infrastructure, platform and lastly infrastructure.
Relevant technologies and Application
Relevant technologies in cloud computing are Amazon web service, Google app engine
and lastly Microsoft office 365.
Amazon Web Service: AWS is nothing but a collection of remote computing services
which can easily create a cloud platform. Various customers which get benefited from AWS are
Netflix, SmugMug and lastly wetransfer (Rao & Selvamani, 2015). AWS provides reliable,
secure and inexpensive infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data. Amazon
provides a platform on which data of client can be organized and stored for achieving objectives.
AWS provides a well-known database for developers and customer for huge storage of data.
Users round the globe can easily run their data on fully managed relation and NoSQL database or
can easily create a database in Amazon EBS and EC2. Amazon SQS is known to be distributed
the message for queuing of service (Zhang, C., & Green, R. (2015). This service is mainly used

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for short messaging when they are transferred between computers and application layers which
are considered to be highly scalable. It generally provides various kinds of an authentication
procedure for secure handling of various kind of data. In this message are generally stored on
various kinds of servers for ensuring of availability.
Fig 2: Amazon Web Services
(Source: Inukollu, Arsi & Ravuri, 2014)
Google app engine: Google App Engine (GAE) in cloud computing is a well-known
platform which can be used for managing and developing web application in various google
infrastructure (Inukollu, Arsi & Ravuri, 2014). Development and maintaining of this application
are considered to be easy and this application can be considered as a traffic and growth in storage
is needed. Infrastructure facilities like server and its maintenance are not required for the
development in GAE and so it is deployed. GAE mainly consist of large number of phases like
runtime environment, Datastore, service. In traditional design there is the usage of a relational
database for persistent usage of data, on the contrary, it makes use of different approach name
Bigtable. Various kinds of the option provided by GAE for data storage are NoSQL, cloud SQL
and lastly cloud storage.

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Microsoft office 365: Office 365 is well-known software of Microsoft in the domain of
cloud computing. It is mainly designed in such a way that it can easily provide end to end service
at low cost IT solution for various small and medium size organization (Akhunzada et al., 2015).
Users round the globe can easily make use of various product and service in the cloud for virtual
connection and collaboration. This cloud service provider can easily safeguard the data with
various kinds of option like disaster recovery, a datacenter with multiple places along with strict
kind of privacy policy. There is a large number of solution like online share point, exchange on
online, Lync online and lastly office web application.
Fig 3: Microsoft 365
(Source: Somani et al., 2017,pp-35)
Challenges and problem associated with Cloud Computing
There is a large number of challenges and problems which are associated with cloud
computing like security, costing model and many other.

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Security: Security has played an important role in the world of cloud computing. Some
of the well-known issues of security in cloud computing are a loss of data, phishing, the botnet
can easily provide more serious kinds of threats to data and software in an organization (Somani
et al., 2017). Multi-tendency model and pooled computing resources in cloud computing have
led to a large number of security challenges. Multi-tenancy model has led to two kinds of
security issues like share resources and reputation fate sharing.
Costing Model: Cloud consumers are generally considered to be tradeoff among
computation, communication and lastly integration. Migration to cloud services can easily
reduce the cost associated with infrastructure. The cost of data integration can be used for
various cloud protocol and interface (Terzi, Terzi & Sagiroglu, 2015). This problem is
considered to be prominent when the consumer makes use of hybrid cloud development model.
Identification of gap
Various kinds of gaps in cloud computing are privacy, reliability, legal issues,
compliance, freedom, long-term viability and lastly gaps in cloud interoperability.
Privacy: Cloud computing makes use of virtual computing technology. Cloud computing
makes use of personal data of a user which can be easily scattered in various data centers which
are present in the same physical location. Attackers can easily analyze critical task which
ultimately depends on the computation task submitted by the user.
Reliability: Cloud servers also experience downtimes and slowing of various local
servers.
Legal Issues: Worries are encountered with a measure of safety and confidentiality of an
individual.

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Freedom: Cloud computing does not allow the user to physically possess the storage of
data, providing data (Chen et al., 2016). In cloud computing, the whole portion of data storage
and control is left on the hand of cloud providers.
Security: Some of the well-known gaps in cloud computing are a loss of data, botnet and
phishing can easily create security threats to data and software of an organization. Multi-tenancy
model and computing resource on the domain of cloud computing have ultimately created new
kinds of security challenges like shared resources (hard disk, VM). Another kind of gap which
has been identified is the reputation of fate-sharing which ultimately damages the reputation of
the good cloud.
Future Research
The increasing demand for various kinds of computation resources has led to much
higher use and demand of cloud computing. Various researchers around the globe make use of
technical problems in the concept of cloud computing with the need of addressing the strength of
cloud systems (Sajid, Abbas & Saleem, 2016). Creation of cloud computing generally involves
various kinds of things like additional costs, improvisation of local infrastructure. Cloud system
allows SMEs for selling of services much easily and quickly. In the near future, cloud computing
will become a true service provider. Employees of the various organization making use of cloud
computing can easily access data from their location and even from distant or abroad location. In
the coming future cloud computing is considered as a major kind of facility for various industries
and will ultimately become a model for business. Virtualization is considered to be an important
part of cloud computing which hides technological complexity and also provide flexibility by
aggregation and translation. Virtualization is mainly inclusive of following characteristics like:

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 It facilities its use by hiding various kinds of infrastructure
like management of configuration.
 Flexibility and adaptability by properly displaying of
proper kind of fundamental implementation.
Various organization has to save a great amount of money from its IT budget. It can be
done by cutting down on acquisition of various equipment or software license. Adaptation of
cloud computing services mainly focuses on its outsourcing. It means that it can easily maximize
the various kinds of IT resources (Sajid, Abbas & Saleem, 2016). The level of cloud computing
can be easily improved by rising productivity of employers which can be achieved by rising of
employer’s productivity. It can be easily achieved by maximization of various IT resources and
various kinds of supporting employers in IT services.
