Professional Computing: Cloud Security, Ethics and Legal Framework

This report delves into the ethical considerations surrounding cloud computing, with a primary focus on data security issues such as account hijacking, and the responsibilities of various stakeholders including cloud users, cloud service providers, cloud auditors, and cloud brokers. It identifies the cloud user as the most affected stakeholder in security breaches and outlines the legal framework in Australia concerning cybercrime, particularly the Criminal Code Act 1995, which addresses unauthorized access to systems. The report proposes solutions to enhance data security, such as encryption processes, the use of strong passwords, and the implementation of anti-virus software, highlighting the importance of encryption in safeguarding data during transmission and storage. It also emphasizes the role of cloud service providers in ensuring the security of their services and preventing harm to users. The report concludes by stressing the need for businesses to adopt these measures to protect their data and comply with legal requirements, with resources like Desklib offering support through past papers and solved assignments.

PROFESSIONAL
COMPUTING PRACTICE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
BACKGROUND ANALYSIS.........................................................................................................3
The relevant facts of the ethical issue-.........................................................................................3
Identification of the stakeholders-...............................................................................................3
The duties and obligations of stakeholders-................................................................................4
LEGAL RESOURCE AVAILABLE IN AUSTRALIA..................................................................4
Stakeholder legally responsible for negative effects of ethical issue-.........................................4
Involvement of stakeholder for ensuring no harm is caused for using the technology-..............5
Proposed solution.........................................................................................................................6
Case study....................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
The professional computing practice can be defined as the course which involves the
computing ethics, laws as well as the employability. The main aim of this course is for the
computing students who previously has not studies the business principles. This course enables
the students to get the professional graduation for their career path (Krishnamurthi and Fisler,
2019). The main ethical issue with the cloud computing is the data security which includes the
account hijacking as this is one of the most serious security issues among the businesses. This
report will discuss the stakeholders which will be impacted within the ethical issues as well as
the duties and obligations of these stakeholders. Along with this, the legal laws which are made
in Australia related to data security will be illustrated and the solutions will be proposed for the
companies to overcome these. Further, the case study will be formulated of the situation
regarding the ethical issue of cloud computing.
BACKGROUND ANALYSIS
The relevant facts of the ethical issue-
Cloud computing is basically the type of the technology which enables the effective
running of the remote services on the internet for managing, access as well as for storing the data
on the servers. The companies are facing lot of the ethical issue and among them one of the main
and serious ethical issue is security issue (Helo and et.al., 2021). There are various security
issues within the cloud computing are such as of the data loss, interfering of the hackers as well
as in secured API’s, account Hijacking as well as changing of the service providers.
Identification of the stakeholders-
There are various stakeholders which are not involved in the cloud computing such as-
Cloud user or consumer (CU), Cloud service providers (CSP), Cloud Auditor, Cloud broker are
the main stakeholders which will be affected if any of the ethical issues occurs within the cloud
computing (Shetty and Panda, 2021). It has been identified that Cloud user or the consumer is the
highly affected stakeholders if the ethical issues are occurred within the organization. The cloud
computing is having much scalability which enable the companies or the businesses to grow
effectively. When the companies are expanding, companies will be able to increase the
infrastructure as well as the facilities without the need of the servers as well as any other
additional capacity of the storage.
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There are various challenges which the stakeholders are facing such as defining the architecture
of the enterprise, selection of the suitable service as well as the providers, extension of the risk
management as well as engagement with the users and the IT people.
The duties and obligations of stakeholders-
The stakeholders of the cloud computing has been identified above and these have many
numbers of the duties as well as the obligations involved within their work. These are as follows-
Cloud user: These are the end users who are involved in utilizing the services which are
provided by the cloud service providers. The pricing policy of the cloud providers is non-
negotiable and some cloud consumers are able to negotiate for better contracts.
Cloud service providers : The main purpose of the cloud service providers is to deliver the
cloud services to the cloud consumers or the end users. This basically offers the number of the
components of the cloud computing to the consumers as they purchase various kinds of the cloud
services from these service providers (Alaloul and et.al., 2020). The services are such as IaaS
Providers, SaaS providers and many more.
Cloud Auditor: This is the individual which conducts the assessment of the cloud services, its
security, performance as well as the overall information system operations of the cloud
implementations. The major roles of the cloud auditor are such as security audit, privacy impact
audit and performance audit.
Cloud broker: The cloud broker provides the services which enable the flexibility as well as the
opportunistic and positive choices to the companies. The major services which are basically
offered are such as service intermediation, service aggregation and service arbitrage.
LEGAL RESOURCE AVAILABLE IN AUSTRALIA
Stakeholder legally responsible for negative effects of ethical issue-
The cloud computing security issues is highly impacting the customers as well as the
businesses. It has been identified that the any of the issues arises in the cloud computing other
than the security issues, the cloud customer is legally accountable for this. The identity as well as
the overall access management is considered as one of the main responsibility of the cloud
consumer and due to this, they are legally accountable for such ethical issues within the cloud
computing (Ramchand, Baruwal Chhetri and Kowalczyk, 2021). They are highly responsible for
ensuring about the security of the endpoints which are used for accessing the overall cloud

services. Under the IaaS model, the cloud consumers are only responsible regarding the
infrastructure security within the businesses.
Within the IaaS model, the cloud consumers are highly important for the protection of the
data measures which are assigned to them as well as they are also responsible for the overall
content and the data themselves. The major application of the overall cloud computing belongs
to the cloud consumers, and so the companies must use them effectively while the process of
design and development of the new applications of the company.
Involvement of stakeholder for ensuring no harm is caused for using the technology-
It has been found that the cloud providers are typically responsible for ensuring that there
must be no harm to the individual or the company who will be using the technology which
involves security storage, compute as well as the network service within the businesses. The
cloud services are also responsible for providing the security for the services which are provided
by them to the end users. The cloud service providers provide the security such as networking,
software, infrastructure and many more, and so they are primarily responsible for the cloud
ensuring any such harm does not cause by using the technology which they are providing to the
cloud customers or the end users.
It is found that in Australia, cybercrime offences are considered in commonwealth
legislation in part of 10.7 and 10.8 under the criminal code act 1995 where it also highlights the
computer intrusion (Kushala and Shylaja, 2020). In Australia unauthorised access to system is
criminalised by both state and federal legislation. In the federal jurisdiction, hacking or attacking
is considered as criminalised activity under the Criminal code act. Generally, people who are
involves and suspect as involved in cybercrime are charged for pursuant to code. Where the
person is charged under the 478.1 section of code that entails the particular person has offended
the unauthorised access to data. According to Australian law their act covers the issues like
computer intrusion, development and distribution of malicious software, dishonestly gaining
access to system and to intentionally deal with the personal financial information (Abssi, Mishra
and Shukla, 2020). In Australia Each territory or state have sort of own legislation system
regarding cybercrime where those legislations also aim to cover the online fraud and other
crimes that are enabled by technologies.
There is a proposed Australian cyber centre as well where Australian National
government leads the cyber security. It brings the cyber security efficiencies from all across the
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governments to modify and enhance the cyber resilience of Australian community and to support
the economic and social prosperity of the country in digital era. When the laws are not
implemented than in such situation it will be difficult to analysed what actually has been done, as
businesses will be unaware of the fact that their systems are hacked. Usually there will be no
penalties for hackers in such it leads to the situation where hackers can proceed efficiently to
attack any system because as such there is no legal system under which they can be liable for
punishment. But after the development and implementation of legal laws it has made easier for
the businesses to keep their data protected.
Proposed solution
Cloud computing simply a technology about delivering the computing services, it accounts
storage, databases, network and software. But currently many people are facing problem
regarding privacy and security, many of firm, as ease of sharing the data over cloud and to make
collaboration in cloud is leading to serious issues that results in data loss and leakage. Most of
the organisation around 69 percent is complaining about its cloud security where they also show
the greater concern regarding cloud security (Mahipal and Sharmila, 2021). When the
organisation is having their cloud storage and which saves the data of consumer and somehow it
gets breached then such organisations are likely to face legal situation and they also considered
as legally responsible for data compromised problem. other challenge in the cloud computing is
about how technology can be accesses that implements the confidentiality and privacy concern
for data. According to Rana and Hajati, (2020) it is found that internet and virtual machines are
commonly used for deploying these privacy services, study further noted that attackers can easily
takes the benefit and easily set up the virtual machines in cloud environment that aims to conduct
vulnerability test. If the attacker finally analyses the weakness of cloud computing, further they
can process with using high processing power to implement brute force attacks that leads to
distributed denial of services and cause availability issues.
For resolving the data security issue proposed solution are encryption process, to use
strong and reliable password and anti-virus software. Following below are the detailed
description about the solution which are as follows:
Encryption process: It is one of the efficient and trustable process related to privacy or security
concern, it is the process of translating the business data or any critical information in a secret
code that can be hard to break or decode. Encrypted data also known as cypher text that ensures

sensitive information remain uncompromised in situation of data breach. Cloud computing data
encryption entails the process for transmitting the data from its original configuration to an
unreadable form so that third party cannot access the data, this process is being done before
sending and storing it in cloud storage (Abdulateef, Mohammed and Abdulateef, 2020). Thus to
avoid any miserable situation it is important to appropriately encrypt the data before uploading it
into the cloud server. Encryption is considering as most efficient elements within organisational
cybersecurity strategy, cloud encryption also encompasses compliances with regulatory
standards like privacy safeguarding for data, they also beneficial in enhancing security against
unauthorised data access from other public cloud.
Anti-virus software: System that is log into the cloud can be open for the attackers as well, in
order to protect the data from being misused and exposed, for that it is important to ensure that
anti-virus is installed in system. There is suitable anti-virus software are available in market that
can be easily deployed for the security reasons. Anti-virus are aims to get rid of system virus,
without having this can have imposed various challenges where there are more possibility
regarding data theft, breach. Cloud based anti-virus solutions helps in keeping the information
safe that is based on malware variants in cloud. Main task of anti-virus is to face other viruses
and to detect it early stage so system can be modified that restricts the cyber security events.
Spyware protection can also be provided with such solution as mainly spyware attacks that spies
on confidential information and can attacks the system, to overcome this attack antivirus can
work efficiently and avoid chances of any spyware attack.
Two factor authentication: There are some instances where unauthorised access is found that
leads to imposed vulnerable challenges for business (Tahirkheli and et.al 2020). To avoid such
situation two factor authentication can also an efficient solution. it is important to ensure that
particular system have strong password policy and to use two factor verification that can helps in
safeguarding from third party access.
Using local backup: It is one of the important aspects which the organisation needs to consider
as to make sure they have better backup system for critical information. This buffer system can
be present in secondary cloud storage, ultimately it will help in providing the contingency plan
that can incorporated against data breach and other security related incidents. Cloud computing is
better solution for business but its security concern cannot be avoided, so it’s better to have
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buffer storage and back up of data system in practice so that useful information can be kept safe
as all business critical decision making process is completely based on data relevancy.
Always makes sure to use reliable password: Weak password can be free pass for the
attackers, to avoid any attack situation it is important for the business to make sure that their
employees are using strong password to enrol into the system. As most of the situation suggests
that weak password allows the hackers to easily access the details of system ultimately it lead to
the situation where whole business has to suffer due to their employee’s silly mistakes.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure that all employees are using strong password to keep their
system safe.
Thus, above are the proposed solution that can deployed to avoid any security reason
event and to keep data safe from any malicious activity (Dashti and et.al, 2020). This solution
can work because of their suitability and efficiency; it is found that having encrypted data has
helped most of the organisation to protect themselves from any data security situation.
Case study
Case scenario is based on cloud data security breach, this miserable situation is arrived for
the Zumbo tech and UK based small and medium size company. Company sells their tech
product to consumer for which they also collect the information of their potential consumer to
provide them better personalised experience. They were running smoothly but suddenly
company’s business is exploited, critical data of the company that stored in database is left open
without any strong password combination which let the attackers to attacks the system and they
theft all critical information. It is found that company’s data is been theft where data of some
consumer is accessed by the attackers, but somehow they managed to protect their financial
information and luckily only few consumer’s details have been exposed to hackers (Sun, 2019).
Because of this miserable situation company has faced lots of challenges to sustain in market.
For that company also comes forward to compensate the consumer whose information is been
exposed. For that they have also faced the legal issues where some of the consumer has file the
case against them, overall company has faced many issues in form of money, legal and other
issue.
From that instance it can be said that due to lower IT protection at cloud system and weak
password authentication has invited the attackers to attack the system, ultimately company is

forced to face vulnerable situation (Shamshirband and et.al 2020). For that reason, the proposed
solution like two step verification, encryption process and anti-virus software can be effective to
solve the security issue. By using encryption method, they can easily protect their information, as
encryption process has some of advantages first is it is easy and cheap to implement, devices and
operating system that are been used today already have some sort of encryption technology for
an example Microsoft windows also provide the BitLocker program that aims to encrypt data of
hard disk. Therefore, this system can be used for the business purpose so that data can be
protected from any attacks. Other advantage of encryption is that it protects from regulatory
fines, as for regulation like GDPR there are no such requirements for encrypting the data,
moreover security measures can be implemented for safeguarding the data.
Just like encryption, two step verification can also be used to protect from any unauthorised
access, this proposed solution helps in testing that particular identity is legitimate or not. Its main
purpose is to enable strong security measure to protect the information from any attacks and to
protect it from mishandlement of accounts (Thabit and et.al 2020). Two step verification (2SV)
also makes harder for the hackers to decode the information and it reduces the chances for fraud
risk. It is found that this proposed solution eventually blocks the 99.9 percent of automated
attacks. Regarding case study where Zumbo tech was attacked by cyber attackers, where they
have lost their critical information is all because of weak password, thus two step verification can
help the firm to put strong password for their system and to implement two step verification so
that every employee’s id can also be verified that ultimately helps in reducing the chance for data
theft situation. Other than encryption and 2SV, installation of anti-virus can also be a potential
solution that will ultimately help them to analyse their system and to make preventive measure at
earlier stage so miserable situation can be easily avoided.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that security reasons are important to taken into
consideration as businesses success is all depends on its data. Due to the rapid emergence of the
technologies businesses are aiming to take use of technologies and other IT systems for their
business productivity, that is why cloud computing is one of the solution which is heavily used
by businesses. Along with numerous benefits there are some drawbacks also which are
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associated with cloud storage in which the major concern is related to ethical issues regarding
data security, data privacy. Above report have discussed the issue related to cloud computing
which recently businesses have been facing, related to this data security came out as major issue
where the businesses are been facing problem like they continuously facing the situation where
their data privacy is been compromised and their critical information is been theft by the
attackers. Moving further report have discussed the list of stakeholders that involved along with
their duties and obligations which they need to follow. Report also discussed the legal resources
that are available and implemented against some data breach case. Lastly report have discussed
the proposed solutions against data security issue and it also highlighted the analysis of case
study.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
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Era. Helix-The Scientific Explorer| Peer Reviewed Bimonthly International
Journal. 10(04). pp.51-58.
Alaloul, W.S., and et.al., 2020. Industrial Revolution 4.0 in the construction industry: Challenges
and opportunities for stakeholders. Ain shams engineering journal, 11(1), pp.225-230.
Dashti, W. and et.al, 2020. Security challenges over cloud environment from service provider
prospective. Cloud computing and data science, pp.12-20.
Helo, P., and et.al., 2021. Cloud manufacturing ecosystem analysis and design. Robotics and
Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 67, p.102050.
Krishnamurthi, S. and Fisler, K., 2019. 13 Programming Paradigms and Beyond. The Cambridge
handbook of computing education research, p.377.
Kushala, M.V. and Shylaja, B.S., 2020, September. Recent trends on security issues in multi-
cloud computing: a survey. In 2020 International Conference on Smart Electronics and
Communication (ICOSEC) (pp. 777-781). IEEE.
Mahipal, S. and Sharmila, V.C., 2021, March. Virtual machine security problems and
countermeasures for improving quality of service in cloud computing. In 2021
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Smart Systems (ICAIS) (pp. 1319-
1324). IEEE.
Ramchand, K., Baruwal Chhetri, M. and Kowalczyk, R., 2021. Enterprise adoption of cloud
computing with application portfolio profiling and application portfolio
assessment. Journal of Cloud Computing, 10(1), pp.1-18.
Rana, A. and Hajati, F., 2020, April. A survey on privacy and security in mobile cloud
computing. In Workshops of the International Conference on Advanced Information
Networking and Applications (pp. 1065-1076). Springer, Cham.
Shamshirband, S. and et.al 2020. Computational intelligence intrusion detection techniques in
mobile cloud computing environments: Review, taxonomy, and open research
issues. Journal of Information Security and Applications. 55. p.102582.
Shetty, J.P. and Panda, R., 2021. An overview of cloud computing in SMEs. Journal of Global
Entrepreneurship Research, pp.1-14.
Sun, P.J., 2019. Privacy protection and data security in cloud computing: a survey, challenges,
and solutions. IEEE Access. 7. pp.147420-147452.
Tahirkheli, A.I. and et.al 2021. A survey on modern cloud computing security over smart city
networks: Threats, vulnerabilities, consequences, countermeasures, and
challenges. Electronics. 10(15). p.1811.
Thabit, F. and et.al 2020. Exploration of security challenges in cloud computing: Issues, threats,
and attacks with their alleviating techniques. Journal of Information and Computational
Science. 12(10).
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