Cloud Computing Security Issues - Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Cloud computing services enabled through information communication technology delivered to a customer as services over the Internet on a leased basis have the capability to extend up or down their service requirements or needs. In this model, the infrastructure is owned by a third party vendor and the cloud computing services are delivered to the requested customers. Cloud computing model has many advantages including scalability, flexibility, elasticity, efficiency, and supports outsourcing noncore activities of an organization. Cloud computing offers an innovative business concept for organizations to adopt IT enabled services without advance investment. This model enables convenient, on-request network accessibility to a shared pool of IT computing resources like networks, servers, storage, applications, and services. Cloud computing can be quickly provisioned and released with negligible management exertion or service provider interaction. Even though organizations get many benefits of cloud computing services, many organizations are slow in accepting cloud computing service model because of security concerns and challenges associated with management of this technology. Security, being the major issues which hinder the growth of cloud computing service model due to the provision of handling confidential data by the third party is risky such that the consumers need to be more attentive in understanding the risks of data breaches in this new environment. In this paper, we have discussed the security issues, the challenges and the opportunities in the adoption and management of cloud computing services model in an organization.