Security Issues with Cloud Computing Security Issues and Availability of Service As most of the cloud computing services

depend on the internet, the availability of the service is incessant. The only thing a user needs to worry about is the security of the data, which is stored on the cloud network, which is popularly known as shared network. Most of the services available on cloud are getting cheaper and cheaper day by day but still several companies are showing their reluctance to adopt cloud platform for mission critical applications. The prime reasons behind this reluctance are availability of the impeccable service, security concerns and performance issues. Yes, security on cloud computing is still an issue with the emerging technologies; there is a new method of hacking coming to the market. The concern on data security is the biggest problem with cloud computing technology. Unless and otherwise could service providers will come up with the best solutions for network security, performance improvement and application availability, the future would be dark for cloud computing technology. All a customer need is a best delivery model that suits a cloud environment, which is secure, scalable and flexible. Customer always looks for high availability of the application he or she is using or deploying. A customer, who is running a online store or travel agency, will never like the website is for hours together because, the entire business for these companies depend on the availability of the service. Any company, which depends on website revenues, may not love to have any kind of service unavailability. In the initial stages of cloud computing, the major problem with the service is availability because cloud environment is very complex. In the complex environment, it used to very difficult to find out the problem to solve the availability issues. If any availability issue comes, it used to take hours to identify the complex problems. But, with the advanced technologies, the service providers have found an alternative way for high availability of service. Most of the times, the question of service availability comes into picture, when you think about the natural disasters. Yes, some critical services should be incessant irrespective of the natural disasters too. To avoid data loss and unavailability of service, people used to maintain servers at different places in olden days. In this situation, could computing gives additional benefits to the customer. The best thing one can do on cloud computing to avoid the downtime, service non-availability, replicate the servers on different cloud environments with different service providers. A customer does not need to purchase any additional servers to do that. It is the matter of spending for the usage. So, service availability issues, which were present in maintaining physical servers, can be solved by using could technology. Though, the cost would be a little bit high, there is no danger of non availability of the service. As cloud is still in the nascent stage in various countries, the service providers are not thinking about providing 100 percent availability. Companies like Amazon and RackSpace offer nearly

100 percent service availability. Ss days pass by and with the increased number of service providers, it will become mandatory for service providers to look all the issue that trouble customers. The situation will come in near future. Impact on Data confidentiality Remote server may not be new concept but with the arrival of latest technology, cloud computing, it is very important for the users knowing about the privacy issues and confidentiality of the business operations. Yes, a cloud is a shared environment on the network, where the resources and information is shared. Of course, all the service providers are taking care about the privacy and confidentiality issues but with the emerging technologies, there is still a chance to misuse the data on the third party cloud. This is where interoperability comes into picture. Interoperability is one of the benefits that a customer gets from the cloud computing environment. The world Privacy Forum has done a critical analysis on the implications of information privacy and confidentiality of the business information on cloud computing. The analysis revealed some facts which every customer needs to know before going for could environment. The analysis report says that the information, which is on cloud, is easily available to the third parties like government agents and private litigants. The location of the cloud service provider, terms and conditions also majorly impact the data privacy and confidentiality of the business information of the customer. Could technology have got several security implications like confidentiality of the business information and privacy of personal information. As the terms and services are provided by the service providers in most of the cases, the user may not take the control over significant risks like privacy of personal information and confidentiality. The location of the information on cloud also determines the privacy and confidentiality levels of the data. Sometimes, it is possible to replicate the information from one cloud location to another cloud location if the owner is same for both the clouds. The user may not know the existence of the second cloud location. So, information can be stored on more than one legal location can impact the privacy and confidentiality of the business. Each and every user must follow some basic rules to ensure the privacy of the personal information and confidentiality of the business information. The first thing- Do not put any pivotal data, which is not only important for you but also for your competitors of cloud, because there is a vulnerability of data security. Audit Ability One of the major negative points of cloud computing is audit ability. Yes, cloud computing services will not provide adequate audit ability to address smooth regulatory compliance.

Though, nearly 60 percent of customers, who use SaaS model services of cloud computing, are pretty much happy with the audit and compliance services they are receiving. Cloud computing is still not now concept, where in people tried to implement first and get the benefits of the same before their competitors can. That phase of cloud computing is already gone and some people have used the services of cloud computing perfectly where as some did not. Now, entire top management of user will completely involve in analyzing the service provider, security, confidentiality issues before zero in on a particular service provider. Audit issues may vary from the platform to platform. Yes, if we look at the Software as a Service platform, the entire system is standard and it needs a minor customization depending on the customer requirement. Likewise, if we look at the Infrastructure as a Service platform, it allows more control towards the customer. Cloud computing service providers are also responding positively for the customers audit related problems these days. Users must read must understand the features of audit ability of a cloud computing before the signing on the agreement. Dont take decisions in hasty. Enquire with your friends and other people who are already using so that you can understand the nitty-gritty. Data Transfer Bandwidth is the primary bottleneck for data transfer in cloud computing. Be it transferring the data from server to client and client to server, it is the matter of good bandwidth, which helps to transfer any kind of data. When you are trying to consider the external cloud service provider, you must tell them about your data transfers because most of the service providers charge based the volume of the data which is transferred. When you are hosting a application on the external cloud, you need to project the future volumes of data transfer because the application usage would change on time to time. This is the reason why most of the cloud environments are scalable enough to allow the great volumes of the data transfer. Cloud computing environments need to be secured to ensure secure data transfers. As cloud is a shared network, the data transfer might be vulnerable. Data Protection and Security Data protection is the major setback of cloud computing. The most prominent data protection issues with cloud environments are. 1. 2. 3. 4. Poor internal IT security Hacking Unauthorized access to the databases Loss of data due to third party cloud environments

Most of the cloud computing service providers will provide the services subject to the data protection rules of national government. As cloud is a shared platform, the risk data loss is

extremely high. Some of the external cloud environment service providers may not comply with the industry best security systems, which ultimately leads to data loss. With the emerging trends in technology, malicious activities like hacking have been increased. Unauthorized access to the database on third party cloud is a major issue these days (Zissis et al, 2010). Most of the people try to create a virtual machine in near proximity of the target server so that they can hack data from the target server. Third party cloud services are very much vulnerable because they do not follow the compliances. With the advanced technologies, companies have started responding positively to the customer enquires of the customer. We can see a lot of improvement with regards to the security and data protection front in cloud computing. In coming days, the security with regards to cloud computing will be increased in the future time. As discussed, the data location is also impacts the security of the data. If a client suspects on the service provider, who does not comply the security compliances, there are not many legal ways to get the investigation done. Network Security Network security is a concern in todays world because the entire world is running on the networks. Yes, cloud computing is based on the shared network. With the increasing usage of the shared networks and shared resources, the problem of network security has come into picture. Cloud computing network security is a set of various factors. It takes care of the data, applications and infrastructure that is associated to it to ensure perfect network security. If the network security is taken care, data protection and application protection issues will be automatically solved. This is the reason why most of the service providers are trying to solve the networking security issues as their primary goal. References Mills, E. (2009). Cloud computing security forecast: Clear skies. CNET News. Rochwerger, R., Caceres, J., Montero, R. S., Breitgand, D., Elmroth, E., Galis, A., Levy, E., Llorente, I.M., Nagin, K. & Wolfsthal, Y (2009). The RESERVOIR Model and Architecture for Open Federated Cloud Computing. IBM Systems Journal, September 09 Schubert, L., Kipp, A. & Wesner, S. (2009). Above the Clouds: From Grids to Resource Fabrics. Amsterdam: IOS Press Sotomayor, B., Montero, R. S., Llorente, I.M. & Foster, I. (2009). An Open Source Solution for Virtual Infrastructure Management in Private and Hybrid Clouds. IEEE Internet Computing, Special Issue on Cloud Computing, October 09 Thomas, J., Kwasniewski, E. J. P. (2011). Cloud Computing in the Government. Data & Analysis Center for Software.

Zissis, D. (2010). Addressing cloud computing security issues. Future Generation Computer Systems.