The introduction of cloud computing creates numerous benefits for consumers of computing services but it also has security concerns associated with it. In addition to most security risks present in the traditional computing environment, cloud computing brings a new set of security issues with it. These issues emerge basically due to the massive sharing of infrastructure and resources which is an inherent feature of the utility service model.
A proper understanding of cloud architecture and appropriate selection of cloud deployment may reduce the security risks to a great extent. It is also important to understand that security maintenance is a combined effort for both the provider and the consumer of cloud. This chapter tries to focus on the security aspects of cloud from different service levels, apart from discussing the cloud security design principles and frameworks.
Cloud-based security systems need to address all the basic needs of an information system like confidentiality, integrity, availability of information, identity management, authentication and authorization. These security requirements are not new, but cloud computing specific standpoint on these issues are essential to analyze as well as implement security in a cloud-based system.
Despite its enormous benefits, security is one critical concern in cloud computing.
CLOUD SECURITY
For an enterprise, sharing infrastructure in cloud computing environment is like a person going to some public place with valuable belongings. Others with wrong intent may anytime target those valuable belongings. Similarly, moving sensitive files or data out of an enterprise's own network security boundary, in cloud computing, also causes security concerns. Hence, implementation of strong identity management and access control mechanism are important in cloud environment.
Security is developing resistance to damage or protecting a system from any harm. Security is a major concern for any computing system and also for the cloud computing system too. Computing system security means protection of the system itself and also of the data that it stores.
When an IT service consumer, be it an individual or an organization, migrates to cloud computing, especially in public cloud services; much of the computing infrastructure moves into the control of third-party cloud services providers.
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