The Concept of Cloud Computing and Issues Regarding its Privacy and Security

The Concept of Cloud Computing and Issues Regarding its Privacy and Security

Satveer Kaur1

Masters of Computer Applications Malwa College,

Bathinda.

Amanpreet Singp

Masters of Technology (CE) Yadavindra College of Engineering,

Abstract

The cloud computing is the fastest growing concept in IT industry. The IT companies have realized that the cloud computing is going to be the hottest topic in the field of IT. Cloud Computing reduces cost by sharing computing and storage resources, merged with an on – demand provisioning mechanism relying on a pay-per- use business model. Using cloud computing, the user can access their resources virtually via internet and do not need to carry their data anywhere. This paper concludes the survey about the previous research papers on cloud computing. The concept of cloud computing and its various security issues and privacy issues has been discussed in this paper.

Keywords :cloud computing , privacy issues , security issues ,

1. Introduction

   In recent years, Internet becomes the essential part of the life. So its need is increasing quickly. A long with this the high co mputing power a lso increases the cost of hardware and the power consumption. As the quality of co mputing increases the storage s pace require ments also increases . So a new technique named cloud computing is trying to solve these problems.

   The basic principle of c loud computing is to make the computing be assigned in a la rge nu mber of computers, rather than local co mputer or re mote server. The cloud computing is e xtension of grid computing, distributed computing and paralle l co mputing [3]. In cloud computing the recourses are shared via internet.Cloud computing provides the fast, quick and convenient data storage and other computing services via internet.

   The cloud computing system is like your virtual computer that is a virtual location of your resources.The user can access their resources those are placed on a cloud as on their real system resources. The user can install applications, store data etc. and can access through internet anywhere.The user do not need to buy or install any hardware to upgrade his machine. They can do it via internet.In future we may need only notebook PC o r a mobile phone to access our powerfu l computer and our resources anywhere.

2. Benefits of Cloud Computing

   1. The cloud computing has a huge scale

   2. The user resources are placed on a virtual location, so the user can access their resources fro m any location anytime fro m their mobile or notebook pc.

   3. Cloud computing is highly re liable.

   4. It provides versatile services and applications.

   5. It can be e xtended up to any level.

   6. It is a la rge pool of resources, so the user can buy any according to need.[3][5]

   7. It is Ext re me ly ine xpensive

3. Cloud Computing Services

   The services of cloud computing are div ided into three categories:

   1. Iaas(Infrastructure as a service)

   2. Paas(Platform as a service)

   3. Saas(Software as a service)

      Figure 1: Categories of Cloud Co mputing

      Figure 2 : The Cloud

      The Cloud computing can also be divided into five layers:- c lient , applications, platform, infrastructure and services.[2]

   4. Cloud Computing Vs Grid Computing

      Job scheduling is the main goal of grid technology, its purpose is to use each and every resource. It can split a la rge task into a lot of independent and unrelated sub tasks, and then every node do the independent jobs. Even any node fails to return result, the whole process will not be affected. Whereas cloud computing will group all the resources. But the cloud resources has to complete a special task. The construction of grid is to complete a specified task, then there will be bio logy grid, geography grid, national educational g rid and also. Cloud computing is designed to meet general application, and there are no grids for a special field.[4]

      Grid Co mputinghas some advantages, likethe computing power and amount of informat ion of any computer can be increased up to any level. So it is good for enterprise tasks to increase system effic iency and decrease the manage ment cost. Cloud co mputing put these advantages to next level. Lots of applications will be co mp leted through internet. Cloud co mputing will e xtend the application of hardware and software, and will change the application mode l of hard ware and software[4]. The user side only includes the usage and everything else is on other side.

      Charac teristic	Cloud computing	Gri d computing
      Service oriented	Yes	Yes
      Loose coupling	Yes	Ha lf
      Strong fault tolerant	Yes	Half
      Business model	Yes	No
      Ease use	Yes	Half
      TCP/ IP based	Yes	Half
      High security	Half	Half
      Virtualizat ion	Yes	Half

      TABLE I. Cloud Co mputing Vs. Grid Co mputing [2]

   5. Cloud Computing Deployme nt Models

      1. Community Cloud :A private or commun ity cloud is an e xclusive network that supplies services to a limited nu mber of people or a g roup of people. Also Co mmunity cloud is a cloud that shares infrastructure

         among many organizations fro m some co mmunity having common concerns.

      2. Public Cloud : A public c loud sells services to anyone on the Internet. A public c loud is needed where many organizations have require ments of same kind and looking to share infrastructure and it can be economically good as the resources are utilized.

      3. Hybri d Cl oud : A hybrid c loud is the combination of Public Cloud and a Private Cloud. In this, enterprises and organisations can utilize the qualities of both of the cloud offerings.

   6. Leading Cloud Service Providers

      There are many service p roviders wh ich provide Cloud Co mputing Serv ice , so me of the m a re :

      1. Ama zon

      2. IBM

      3. RackSpace

      4. Google

      5. Microsoft

      6. CSC

      7. BlueLoc k

      8. NephoScale

      9. Verizon/Terre mark

      10. Joyent

      11. Salesforce

      12. VM ware

      13. Netsuite

      14. 3Tera

   7. Cloud ComputingSecurity Issues

      Security issues are the most concerned challenges in cloud co mputing[3]. Cloud is e xpected to offer the capabilit ies like encryption strategies to ensure safe data storage environment, strict access control, secure and stable backup of user data. However, cloud allo ws users to achieve the power of co mputing which beats their own physical do ma in. It leads to many security problems. We will discuss the major security concerns in the following:

      1. Identi ficati on and Authentic ati on :The mu lti- tenancy in cloud computing allows a single instance of the software to be accessed by more than one users [3]. This will cause identification and authenticatio n problem. Because diffe rent users use different tokens and protocols , that may cause interpretability problems.

      2. Access control : Confidentia l data can be illegally accessed due to lenient access control.If adequate security mechanis ms are not applied thenunauthorized access may e xist. As data exists for a long time in a cloud, the higher the risk of illegal access[3].

      3. Data Seizure: The co mpany providing service may v iolate the la w. There is a risk of data seizure by the some foreign government[1].

      4. Encrypti on/ Decrypti on: There is an issue of the Encryption/ Dec ryption key that are provided. The keys should be provided by the customer itself[1].

      5. Policy Integr ation: Different c loud servers can use different tools to ensure the security of client data. So integration policy is one of the ma jor concerns of security.

      6. Audi t: In cloud co mputing the Cloud Se rvice Provider (CSP) controls the data being processed. CSP may use data while being processed[3]. So the process must be audited. The all user activities must be traceable. The amount of data in Cloud Co mputing may be very large. So it is not possible to audit everything.

      7. Availability: Availability is the ma jor concern in the cloud computing. When the client data is virtualized, clients have no control on the physical data[3]. If in the cloud, the data or service is not available, it is rigid to fetch the data.

      8. Government restrictions : In some countries there are some ru les about the data storage , that what kind of data can be stored by its citizens and there is a time limit for which the data can be stored. Sometimes customer stress their financial informat ion on the cloud

      , so some bank polic ies dont allow the customers to store that kind of informat ion outside the country[1].

   8. Privacy Issues

      1. Unauthorized Secondary Usage

         The data may be put to unauthorized uses. The cloud service provider may getcharges from authorized secondary uses of customers data, most co mmonly the targeting of advertisements. However, some secondary data uses may be unwanted to the data owner, for e xa mple some co mpetitor of users company may get the sales detail or other important data. Currently there are no such restrictions to such secondary uses [5].

      2. Lack of User Control

         A SaaS environment is used in cloud computing, so the service provider becomes responsible for storage of data, so the visibility and control is limited to the user[5]. The user may need to get control on their data when it is stored and processed in the cloud. Th is can be a lega l require ment or otherwise or a user is switching to some other c loud service provider. On the cloud there is a threat of theft or misuse of data

      3. Data Proliferation and Transborder Data Flow

         In Data proliferation themu ltiple people or co mpanies may involve and is not controlled by the data owners. Cloud Service Providers ensure availability by ma king copies of data in mu ltiple datacenters. It never guarantees that a copy of the data or its backups are not stored or processed under some la ws or conditions , or that all these copies of data are de leted when they are not required.

         The each and every data movement on the cloud are across and between legal jurisdictions, that increases risk factor and legal co mp le xity because the data crosses the organization boundaries.

         The local laws can be violated while transferring data on the cloud. Cloud co mputing worsens the transborder data flow issue because due to the dynamic nature of

         cloud computing , it is never c lear that which server will be used[5].

      4. Dynamic Provisioning

      Cloud computing faces many traditional outsourcing problems. So Itis difficult to judge that which of those is responsible for preserving legal require ments for private data or data handling standards to be set up andfollowed [5]. The cloud is dynamic in nature so is it not yet clear that upto what level cloud outsources involved in processing can be properly identified, checked and ascertained as being trustworthy. There should be some set of rules to be set up for sub- contractors.

   9. Conclusion

      The Cloud computing is beneficial in so many aspects. It will take the co mputing to a step ahead. It will provide so many benefits to the users. There are fe w lacks related to privacy and security are there. But every new technology when comes it has some lac ks and its get imp roved as the time passes as its usage becomes more and more. So for the cloud computing there should be some set of ru les the CSPs should follow as the all private data of the users should be safe and confidential.

   10. References

1. KreimirPopovi, eljkoHocenski , Cloud computing security issues and challenges ,M IPRO 2010

2. Chunye Gong, Jie Liu, Qiang Zhang, Haitao Chen and Zhenghu Gong , Characteristics of cloud computing , 39th International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops

   ,2010

3. ZiyuanWang , Security and privacy issues within the Cloud Computing ,International Conference on Computational and Information Sciences , 2011

4. Shuai Zhang, ShufenZhang,Xuebin Chen and XiuzhenHuo , The Comparison Between Cloud Computing and Grid Computing , International Conference on Computer Application and System M odeling (ICCASM 2010),2010

5. Siani Pearson and AzzedineBenameur , Privacy ,

   Security and Trust Issues Arising from Cloud Computing,2nd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science

6. Shuai Zhang , Shufen Zhang , Xuebin Chen and XiuzhenHuo , Cloud Computing Research and Development Trend , Second International Conference on Future Networks , 2010

7. Shufen Zhang , Shuai Zhang , Xuebin and Chen Shangzhuo Wu , Analysis and Research of Cloud Computing System Instance, Second International Conference on Future Networks, 2010

8. ZhidongShen and QiangTong ,The Security of Cloud Computing System enabled by Trusted Computing Technology, 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS) , 2010

9. AlokTripathi and Abhinav M ishra , Cloud Computing

   Security Considerations

10. AkhilBehl ,Emerging Security Challenges in Cloud Computing An insight to Cloud security challenges and their mitigation