Cloud Computing Security Technologies and Challenges

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ITC595 Assessment 5

ITC595 Research Project
A. Author
ITC595 MIT, School of Computing &
Mathematics, Charles Sturt University
[e-mail]
Contents
Technology involved to maintain security in cloud computing...................................................................3
Relevant technologies and their applications...............................................................................................4
Challenges identified in cloud computing...................................................................................................6
Identification of gaps addressed..................................................................................................................7
Issues addressed......................................................................................................................................7
Issues not addressed................................................................................................................................8
Critical issues..........................................................................................................................................8
Future research............................................................................................................................................9
Reference...................................................................................................................................................10
The technology involved to maintain
security in cloud computing
As suggested by the authors, Lokhande and
Shelke (2013), the technology involved in
order to maintain the security and privacy of
data present on cloud have been described
below and these technologies have been
implemented on software or machines so
that when data move from in premised data
centers to cloud platform, it can remain
secure.
 Firewall – firewalls are used to
diminish the rate attacks in virtual
servers present in cloud computing
platforms. In order to maintain the
firewall server policies, a bi-
directional firewall is deployed on
virtual machines so that it can
provide centralized management.
The functionalities of the firewall for
securing the server should be such
as, it should provide isolation for
virtual machines. It should be able to
filter the addresses of source and
destination. The firewall should

enable covering IP based protocols
such as UDP, TCP, etc.
 Intrusion detecting technique- this
technology is used to apply intrusion
detection so that the vulnerabilities
in the server can be identified on
time. As the cloud server contains a
similar type of operating system and
web applications as contained by the
physical server. Hence deploying the
intrusion detection solution can
identify all possible and new types of
attacks.
 Integrity monitoring- this technology
can detect the malicious code and
unexpected changes that occurred in
the operating system by continuously
monitoring the systems.
 Log inspection technique- this
technique monitors the application
and operating system logs so that the
security events can be identified
which might be present in the logs.
This technique can identify the
suspicious behavior, has security
event collection of the data center
and collects the administrative
actions related to the security. This
technique should be applied at the
machine level.
Relevant technologies and their
applications
The technologies used in cloud computing
are:
Grid computing- this technology ensures
that computing is divided among the
connected devices in the case when these
devices share the same objective. The
resources shared here are distributed
geographically and are heterogeneous. The
functioning of grid computing is to divide
the large tasks into smaller chunks of tasks
which can be distributed in the grid.
 Applications- to provide distributed
supercomputing, high-throughput,
collaborative, on demand and data-
intensive computing.
Virtualization- this technique is used by the
devices to share one instance of severing or
any resources among each other and among
different organizations. In virtualization, the
design is multitenant which makes it easy
for different organization to customize and
modify the design according to their
requirements. This makes sure that even
when the resource being shared is the same
but then also each organization has its own
instance.

 Applications- applications of
visualization in cloud computing is
to protect the system from failures
because it lets the user work on
another device by creating the
backup of data. Virtualization creates
a virtual switch to protect the data
from viruses, malware, and threats.
Utility computing- this technique is used to
provide the services on demand basis and on
pay on the basis of usage model. This act as
a metered functionality and provides the
services in demand. This ensures that the
operating costs of the system providers are
maximized due to utility pricing of the
services.
 Applications- it provides the
functionality of creating virtual
servers, software, and storage and
enables backup solutions.
Autonomic computing- this is used because
it doesn’t require any human intervention to
manage itself and it can monitor itself and
manage according to the situation present
internally and externally. Autonomic
computing prevents the complexity of
management of the system by automatically
working on its own (Dhiman & Joshi ).
 Applications- Other than cloud
computing the application of
autonomic computing are load
balancing, updating the software and
system, allocating of processes,
providing system recovery and
backups.

Challenges identified in cloud computing
The challenges found out in cloud
computing are as follows:
Data confidentiality- in cloud computing
the data might be sensitive which makes
security as the biggest concern while using
the cloud services. Most of the organizations
are still not comfortable in using cloud
services because they cannot rely on these
services and compromise the security of data
at any cost (Thakur & Goraya, 2017). Cloud
computing provides the environment where
the entire set of data is available on
resources available on the network which
makes it easy to get accessed with the help
of virtual machines. The data centers present
in the cloud environment are present in
various areas around the world which might
be out of reach of the managers to monitor
and control it. This leads to the situation of
the security and privacy concerns. The
server breakdown chances are also high
(Bhadauria, Chaki, Chaki & Sanyal, 2014).
If the information is available on the cloud
platform from a long period of time there are
high chances for it to get accessed from
unauthorized and unapproved accounts. The
information is also present virtually in areas
which can be disclosed by the users present
on the cloud. Also, cloud systems may
encounter downtime. There are chances that
the organization might select a CSP which
makes it get sealed inside hence leading to
increased vulnerabilities to security (Ahmed
& Zolkipli, 2016). Un-Authorization of data
can also be a huge challenge of the cloud
computing platform. This can lead to data
theft and attacks which might even destroy
the data completely. If the authentication
technique is not stronger than required then
the hackers can also attack the resources of
the organization. Therefore it is the main
responsibility of CPU to provide its users
the authentication technique (Begum, 2018).

Identification of gaps addressed
Issues addressed
In order to maintain security in the cloud
computing platform, the following issue has
been addressed in the literature reviews.
1. Implementing the perimeter
firewall- working of firewalls is
simple because they Check for the
destination packets and the source
packets. In order to secure the data
present at the cloud platform,
advanced firewalls are needed
because they can also perform the
stability of packets detection. It can
either reject the packet or approve
the packet according to the integrity
of the packet in order to ensure the
stability. There are firewalls such as
Palo Alto firewall which examines
the data present at the packet and
identifies the integrity, destination,
and source of packets. It provides
enough granularities to make sure
that the system is safe from attacks
and threats (Lee, 2015).
2. Event logging and intrusion
detection- this issue has been
addressed which ensures the safety
by tracking and recording all the type
of intrusion attempts that have been
made in the system. Hence these
solutions are necessary to be
implemented in order to meet the
PCI standard. It also updates the
system and updates the rules of
security so as to monitor the services
and track the faulty IP addresses and
signal which can cause a threat to the
system (Kumar, Singh, Bali, Misra &
Ullah, 2015).
3. Internal firewall - outer firewalls
can only prevent the hacks and
attacks to some extent. But the
internal firewall is necessary to be
present in premises so that it can
oppose the accessing of secured data
and applications.
Encryption- the methods explained
above can be used in the
combination of encryption
techniques because then only the
data will be secured enough. If the
encryption will be stronger than the
data will be hard to crack and the
organization might get a chance to
enhance their privacy and security in
case of a cyber-attack (Ullrich,
Cropper, Frühwirt & Weippl, 2016).

4. Hardware security- if the hackers
can access and hack the hardware
that is being used to run the cloud
computing environment then it
becomes a lot easy for them to hack
the data also. Therefore securing the
hardware is also a major concern. In
order to secure the hardware, fourth
tier data centers can be used which
should also be used with continuous
monitoring of the hardware through
maintaining logs and CCTV. The
access should be allotted on
biometric authentication only. The
security should be tight enough to
prevent any access to the hardware
by an unauthorized person
(Boenisch, Buendgen, Geisert, Lang,
Lattermann & Mencias, 2018).
Issues not addressed
Inconsistency in access management- the
cloud environment is made up of SaaS
services implemented by the organization,
various infrastructure that is used by
developers which consist a little concern on
the security issues. Most of the developers
don't apply access control at the time of
development and leave the monitoring and
access control mechanism on the cloud
platform only. The issue lies because of the
hybrid cloud where the traditional on-
premises data centers are present with the
cloud platforms. The attack on
authentication can make the hackers affect
the data and resources present on the cloud
and on-premises both. Therefore in addition
to the policies used, a centralized approach
is needed to ensure security.
Most of the cloud providers and the
organization implement cloud platform and
ensure the security of it. But not every
system can be protected from all types of
attacks because in this new era, during the
advent of technology, vulnerabilities and
risks have also increased and there are
several more ways to attack the data. The
cloud providers focus only on securing it at
the first point but the cloud providers should
also be providing responses during the
attack. The organization should also know
how to handle the system when it has been
attacking and how to prevent it from further
attacks. The response processes should also
be monitored by the organization. When the
organization cannot handle the cloud
providers and cannot engage during the data
attacks, it will cause a delay in response
generation. The point up to which cloud
service providers has the security provided
is the beginning point for organizations
(Wang, Yi, Bertino & Sun, 2016).

Critical issues
The major concerns of cloud computing are
the security and privacy because the data of
enterprises which contains sensitive
information, then residing on the cloud
premises possess huge risks of security as
the firewall present in a corporate firewall.
There are several issues such as hacking and
data theft can also cause and affect various
clients. When a single site is under attack,
the multiple clients get affected. In order to
achieve the security of data by incorporating
the hardware security, encryption
techniques, data loss prevention software
and many more increases the cost to the
maximum level. The service level agreement
made between the provider and the
organization doesn't provide enough
guarantee that the solution will be secured
enough and will provide scalability when
needed. The services are also provided on
demand, therefore, assessing the cost needed
for moving the data on a cloud platform is
difficult. Also, the services provided by the
cloud service providers lack 24*7
availability. Which makes it very important
to handle the services by using third-party
tools. The performance of cloud services
and the bandwidth required is a lot more
because the complex data is required to have
a large bandwidth (Mangiuc, 2012).
Future research
According to the problems of security and
privacy identified in the research work and
their respective solution which can be
implemented to provide security to the
sensitive data by various means (Zhou, Cao,
Dong & Lin, 2015). There are still a lot of
concerns which make the solution less
effective because these solutions don’t
guarantee to provide maximum security
from all types of possible attacks. The
services are also provided on demand,
therefore, assessing the cost needed for
moving the data on a cloud platform is
difficult. The issue lies because of the hybrid
cloud where the traditional on-premises data
centers are present with the cloud platforms.
The attack on authentication can make the
hackers affect the data and resources present
on the cloud and on-premises both.
Therefore in addition to the policies used, a
centralized approach is needed to ensure
security. The cloud providers focus only on
securing it at the first point but the cloud
providers should also be providing
responses during the attack. When the
organization cannot handle the cloud
providers and cannot engage during the data
attacks, it will cause a delay in response

generation. hence the future consent in
research will be to make the cloud service
providers and organizations an effective way
to generate the responses and to prevent the
on-going attack. Also there are numerous
cases where the organization fails to take the
hint from the vulnerabilities which makes
them unaware of the fact that their data is
under attack hence the future research work
will focus on the techniques that need to be
implemented in cloud platforms to prevent
the attacks and to inform the organization
about the attack at earlier stages of attack
(Taherkordi, Zahid, Verginadis & Horn,
2018).
Reference
Lokhande, T. S., & Shelke, R. R. (2013). A
review paper on cloud computing
security. International Journal of Advanced
Research in Computer Science, 4(6).
Dhiman, M. A., & Joshi, M. (2014). A
Survey of Cloud Computing: Designing,
Applications, Security Issues and Related
Technologies.
Thakur, A., & Goraya, M. S. (2017).
PRIMARY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
IN CLOUD COMPUTING: A BRIEF
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Research in Computer Science, 8(7).
Bhadauria, R., Chaki, R., Chaki, N., &
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Ahmed, H. A. S., & Zolkipli, M. F. B.
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Zhou, J., Cao, Z., Dong, X., & Lin, X.
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Mangiuc, D. M. (2012). Security Issues of
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