Cloud Storage: Investigating Advantages and Disadvantages Report

This report provides a detailed overview of cloud-based storage, examining its advantages and disadvantages. It begins with an introduction to cloud computing and storage, highlighting the concept's origins and evolution. The report discusses the usability, accessibility, data integrity verification, cost-effectiveness, and disaster recovery capabilities as key advantages. It also addresses the significant disadvantages, including security risks, internet dependency, bandwidth limitations, and software availability issues. The research methodology involved reviewing peer-reviewed articles to provide a balanced perspective on the topic, concluding that while cloud storage offers numerous benefits, potential drawbacks must be carefully considered for effective implementation.

Running head: CLOUD BASED STORAGE
Cloud Based Storage: Its Advantages and Disadvantages
Name of the Student
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CLOUD BASED STORAGE
Abstract
The objective of the report is to know about the details regarding cloud computing and cloud
based storage. There are various significant advantages and disadvantages for any typical
cloud computing and these advantages or disadvantages are solely required by the client to
understand the concept. The cloud storage is the online store or online location to keep all
types of confidential information and data. The cost of this cloud storage is very less and
even the smaller organizations can easily afford it. The report puts forward a brief research on
this topic to know regarding the storage. Supporting articles that are being derived from
scholar website are provided here. Specific examples are also given for supporting the
research.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2. Background............................................................................................................................3
3. Methodology and Research Details.......................................................................................3
4. Issues, Various Points of View..............................................................................................3
5. Advantages.............................................................................................................................4
6. Disadvantages........................................................................................................................4
7. Findings..................................................................................................................................5
8. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................5
9. References..............................................................................................................................6
10. Bibliography.........................................................................................................................7

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1. Introduction
Cloud computing is the systematic practice of transferring data from one location to
another through the medium of Internet connection. It can be simply defined as the paradigm
of the information technology, which is utilized for allowing as well as accessing all types of
system resources for the purpose of public utility (Stanek et al. 2014). Cloud storage is the
location where of cloud computing, where the data gets stored by the clients of cloud
computing for getting easy and simple access to the data. The cloud storage comprises of
various kinds of benefits and disadvantages that are required by the client to know.
This report will outline a significant research on the cloud storage with its benefits
and disadvantages. There are various features or characteristics of the cloud storage that
provide utmost benefits to their users. This report will highlight the various advantages and
disadvantages of any cloud based storage with proper research. This report even provides
significant details regarding the various features that are important in this topic.
2. Background
Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider invented the concept of cloud computing in the year
1960. He was the first individual to understand and help all the users of cloud computing. He
was working with ARPANET. The main aim of this invention was to make a connection
between the data and the users perfectly and without any type of complexities. CompuServe
was responsible for creating the first cloud data storage for all of its users. It was done in the
year 1983 and in the year 1994, the popular organization known as AT&T was responsible
for launching a specific online platform for its clients (Stefanov and Shi 2013). The name of
this online platform was PersonaLink Services. It was mainly created by the organization for
the entrepreneurs, both of business communication as well as personal communication. The
storage made by them was completely web based and had an electronic meeting place just
like cloud. Amazon Web Services solely introduced their first cloud storage in 2006 with the
rest of the world. The services that adopted this cloud storage of AWS S3 were Smugmug,
Synaptop, Dropbox, Pinterest and many more.
3. Methodology and Research Details
Methodology is the speculative analysis for all techniques, which are solely utilized
for executing various activities or actions. The report is written by reviewing various peer
reviewed article and thus by selecting the best twelve articles. These articles have helped to
complete the report perfectly. Significant details have been provided here.
4. Issues, Various Points of View
According to Fernando, Loke and Rahayu 2013, cloud computing is the best method
of hassle free data transfer over the Internet. It helps the user to transfer any bulk amount of
data easily.
As per Terry et al. 2013, cloud storage is responsible for storing any type of data
effectively and effortlessly.

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5. Advantages
Cloud storage is considered as the most significant and important data storage, which
could be used by various providers of cloud to perfectly preserve, organize, handle and taking
backups of the data. Cloud data storage is solely responsible for all types of data handling and
data related operations. It is the perfect integration of cloud computing and information
system (Fernando, Loke and Rahayu 2013). There are various core and important benefits in
cloud based storages. They help all the users to know about the data and store them without
getting into any type of problem and complexity. Following are the several advantages of
cloud storage.
i) Usability and Easy Accessibility: This is one of the most important advantages of
cloud storage. This storage could be easily utilized or used from anywhere on the Internet.
The usability of this storage is very simple and so is the implementation of it. The easy
accessibility is the other important advantage of the cloud based storage. The data can be
easily accessed over the Internet, if it is being stored in the cloud based storage. As the data
retrieval and access is very easy, it is utilized by various organizations and enterprises.
ii) Data Integrity Verification: The second major advantage of the cloud storage is
that the verification of the data integrity is not required (Li et al. 2013). This type of storage is
responsible for providing data confidentiality and integrity to the clients of the cloud and they
do not have to verify whether the data has integrity or not. This saves time of the clients as
well as the cloud provider and thus can be termed as extremely helpful for them.
iii) Inexpensive: The next major benefit of this cloud storage is that it is extremely
inexpensive. All the organizations or enterprises have the capability to afford this type of
storages in their business for storing the data. Moreover, due to this low cost, the business
processes or business operations become cost effective and thus the annual cost or annual
revenue is reduced to a great extent.
iv) Disaster Recovery: Another important advantage of the cloud based storage is the
presence of a disaster recovery plan. DR is a collection of various policies, processes and
tools for enabling the recovery of the most significant systems and infrastructure that is
caused either due to natural disasters or due to human made issues (Yang and Jia 2014). This
can also be defined as the subset of business continuation or business processes. There is
always a high chance in any business to face such dangerous situations, where the data could
be lost completely. Te main issue here is that if the data is lost, the organization would be
losing the important factors and thus disaster recovery is very important. Cloud storage has
this type of storage within the storage and thus if any issue arises, they have the capability to
fight against it.
6. Disadvantages
Cloud based storage has various benefits or advantages. These benefits are required
for the clients to gain extreme popularity and profit. The data access and retrieval is easily
done with the help of cloud storage. However, in spite of all these advantages, the cloud
based storage comprises of various disadvantages as well (Yang and Jia 2014). These
disadvantages often become very problematic for the clients as they do not have the idea to
deal with these problems. Following are the most significant disadvantages of the cloud based
storages.

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i) Security: One of the most vulnerable threat or risk in cloud storage is the security
and privacy. This lack of privacy and security often becomes extremely threatening for the
users to utilize the storage as there is a chance that the data would be lost completely and
cannot be recovered (Yang and Jia 2014). Although the cloud storage comprises of a DR plan
within it, this chance of data loss is always present with it.
ii) Internet Dependency: The second vulnerable drawback of this cloud based storage
is its Internet dependency. Any cloud operation can be executed only with the help of Internet
connection. Due to this dependency on the Internet connection, extremely smaller
organizations are unable to afford and access this storage . There is always a constant
requirement of Internet connection for executing any particular process or procedure within
the cloud.
iii) Bandwidth: Restriction in the bandwidth allowance is the next major disadvantage
of cloud storage. Various services and different cloud storages have separate allowance for
bandwidth (Li et al. 2013). When any particular user crosses that restriction in the bandwidth
allowance, it is evident that more expense is required.
iv) Availability of Software: The last disadvantage of any cloud based storage is the
constant availability of services and software. When the services and software are not present
constantly, it is not possible to complete the data storage within the cloud.
7. Findings
Observations have been taken from the above report that cloud based storages are
very important for the storage of any type of data. The references and the bibliography
consist of the twelve best articles. These articles have helped to make the topic absolutely
clear. The report also has a detailed research on the given topic of cloud based storage and its
advantages and disadvantages.
8. Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that cloud based storage is
significant requirement for any type of data storage. It solely stores all types of data or any
confidential information. The most interesting fact about this cloud storage is that an in built
disaster recovery plan is present within it. This helps the cloud based storage to gain
popularity and become acceptable by all the users. There are various significant advantages
and disadvantages in this cloud storage. These advantages and disadvantages are very vital
information for any user as it helps them to understand whether they should take up cloud
storage for their business or not. The above report has provided a brief understanding about
the cloud based storage and its benefits and issues. The research is done by reviewing various
articles. After evaluating all the articles, the conclusion is drawn that cloud storage is helpful
for all.

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9. References
Fernando, N., Loke, S.W. and Rahayu, W., 2013. Mobile cloud computing: A survey. Future
generation computer systems, 29(1), pp.84-106.
Li, Z., Wilson, C., Jiang, Z., Liu, Y., Zhao, B.Y., Jin, C., Zhang, Z.L. and Dai, Y., 2013,
December. Efficient batched synchronization in dropbox-like cloud storage services.
In ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms and Open
Distributed Processing (pp. 307-327). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Stanek, J., Sorniotti, A., Androulaki, E. and Kencl, L., 2014, March. A secure data
deduplication scheme for cloud storage. In International Conference on Financial
Cryptography and Data Security (pp. 99-118). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Stefanov, E. and Shi, E., 2013, May. Oblivistore: High performance oblivious cloud storage.
In Security and Privacy (SP), 2013 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 253-267). IEEE.
Terry, D.B., Prabhakaran, V., Kotla, R., Balakrishnan, M., Aguilera, M.K. and Abu-Libdeh,
H., 2013, November. Consistency-based service level agreements for cloud storage.
In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (pp.
309-324). ACM.
Yang, K. and Jia, X., 2014. DAC-MACS: Effective data access control for multi-authority
cloud storage systems. In Security for Cloud Storage Systems (pp. 59-83). Springer, New
York, NY.

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10. Bibliography
Goyal, S., 2014. Public vs private vs hybrid vs community-cloud computing: A critical
review. International Journal of Computer Network and Information Security, 6(3), p.20.
Lee, G., 2014. Cloud networking: understanding cloud-based data center networks. Morgan
Kaufmann.
Ren, Y.J., Shen, J., Wang, J., Han, J. and Lee, S.Y., 2015. Mutual verifiable provable data
auditing in public cloud storage. 網網網網網網網網, 16(2), pp.317-323.
Rountree, D. and Castrillo, I., 2013. The basics of cloud computing: Understanding the
fundamentals of cloud computing in theory and practice. Newnes.
Wang, C., Chow, S.S., Wang, Q., Ren, K. and Lou, W., 2013. Privacy-preserving public
auditing for secure cloud storage. IEEE transactions on computers, 62(2), pp.362-375.
Yang, K. and Jia, X., 2013. An efficient and secure dynamic auditing protocol for data
storage in cloud computing. IEEE transactions on parallel and distributed systems, 24(9),
pp.1717-1726.