Data security is becoming a major concern in information technology. Considering the cloud computing environment, it has come to an extremity as data security and privacy protection are two of the key factors of user’s concerns related to cloud technology today . Albeit, many techniques on ‘cloud computing’ are in academics and industries, data security and privacy protection are still getting more crucial for the future development of cloud computing technology in every domain . In short, the cloud is an environment of the hardware and software resources in the data centers, offering different services over the network to meet user’s needs . In the cloud computing environment, both applications and resources are on-demand over the internet as services — this indicates that data security and privacy protection issues have relevance to both hardware and software when it comes to cloud architecture .
The hype of the cloud keeps growing since 2008. Today, Cloud Computing Can Help Hospitals Build A Robust Patient Management System . Its features include multitenancy, elasticity, and the potential for maximal resource use. Since it has on-demand nature with high levels of virtualization, automation, barrier-free accessibility, and reliable internet, it allows elastic scaling up with the least resources needed .
A business can assess storage and other services according to the volume of it, using pay per use cloud. This also has a major benefit of not requiring users to invest in the resources that have a high capacity — without in-depth knowledge of the volume of business in advance . Once the pooling of resources is there, services could be in use for a more efficient way for both the provider and the user . Amazon Web Services or AWS cloud computing is a perfect example of big tech companies taking cloud services to next level.
Main Cloud Service Models
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) — allows an on-demand model for pre-configured virtualized data center computing resources .
Platform as a Service (PaaS) — enables organizations to focus on creating and running web applications and services by offering tools and other computing infrastructure .
Software as a Service (SaaS) — consists of applications hosted by a third-party and often delivered as software services over a web browser, accessed on the client’s side .
Potential Drawbacks of Cloud Computing
The basic challenges of cloud computing includes its Security and Privacy issues; due to their nature, as it includes storing unencrypted data on a machine operated by someone, except the original owner of the data . Moreover, these issues emerge from lack of data control, ambiguity related to data status, lack of trust of all parties with access, and compliance with data’s legal flow over borders .
Yet, the nature of the risks varies in different scenarios.
Data Protection
Data security is crucial in a cloud computing environment where the best option is encryption technology . Hard drive producers supply self-encrypting drives that provide automated encryption. This encryption software tends to protect your data. Considering the security of transmitted data, SSL encryption is the best way to secure your online communications . It authenticates your website or business, assuring data integrity. Also, the information of users is not changed during transmissions. A perfect example of data security is IBM for Cloud Businesses , as it doesn’t only ensure data protection, but also secure usage of it .
User Access Control
SaaS environment provides the control of consumers’ data to the service provider to restrict the data visibility and control . In such a case, there is a risk of a data breach or misused as consumers won’t have any control over the cloud. Also, the implementation of poor access control procedures come up with many threat opportunities . For instance, disgruntled ex-employees of cloud provider organizations maintain remote access to manage customer cloud services — this can cause intentional loss to their data sources .
Unauthorized Usage of Data
This includes using data, ranging from targeted advertising to the re-sale of data on the cloud . The service provider can earn a good income from the secondary usage of data. Yet, the agreements between clients and providers should be more specific about unauthorized usage as it increases trust and reduces security concerns . Moreover, the threat from external attackers could be there to apply more to public internet-facing clouds . Also, every type of cloud delivery model in danger of external attackers, in private clouds where user endpoints could be the final hit . Cloud providers with large data stores credit card details and personal information will available to attacks — this includes the threat of hardware attack, social engineering, and supply chain attacks by the attackers …………………
Read full Story at https://autome.me on August 25, 2020.
